Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest Growing Press Empire - Hardcover

Siklos, Richard

3.68

25 ratings by Goodreads

9780433397496: Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest Growing Press Empire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0433397497 ISBN 13: 9780433397496

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd, 1997

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In 1985 Conrad Black was a 40-year-old financier with a passion for publishing and a string of corporate coups and controversies behind him in his native Canada. With military precision, Black set about acquiring newspapers and the influence that goes along with them, amassing in just three years interests in more than 300 titles. This book presents the inside story of Black's relentless quest to become the world's leading press baron.

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Review:

Here's a twist: a newspaper baron who hates journalists. Conrad Black, the Canadian owner of several newspapers, including the London Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times, has a reputation for suing reporters who write about him and for describing the press as lazy, dishonest, ignorant, and irresponsible. Yet the man has made a fortune off of the papers he owns, catapulting him into the top ranks of media moguls. Given Black's oft-stated disdain for journalists and his litigious nature, one would have to regard Richard Siklos, the New York bureau chief for the Financial Post, as either extraordinarily brave or very foolhardy for writing Shades of Black, an up-front examination of the media magnate.

Siklos explores Black's privileged background and his start in journalism. Newspapers were just one of Black's early business ventures--he also owned controlling interest in a grocery chain and in mining--but he soon saw them as a means of acquiring both wealth and power. Shades of Black chronicles Black's acquisition of struggling papers and his subsequent cost-slashing, union-breaking methods of returning them to profitability. Throughout this fascinating book, Siklos allows Conrad Black's larger-than-life personality to come through, and--love him or hate him--Black makes for great reading.

Review:

Conrad Black, born in 1944, decided during the 1980's that he wanted to become a worldwide newspaper tycoon. Richard Siklos, New York City bureau chief for the Financial Post, explains in this biography how Black pulled it off. Today, Black owns major newspapers in England, Canada, Australia, Israel and the United States. In an era where seers spout the conventional wisdom that hard-copy newspapers are dead, Black is a contrarian. Unfortunately, he is not a particularly interesting human being, unless an instinct for the jugular in business and the wealth that sometimes results from the cutthroat nature are tantamount to interest. His business deals, though, are interesting. Although on one level Siklos has written a traditional biography (without Black's blessing, but also with his limited cooperation), on another level Siklos has written a far more compelling book. That book within the biographical form explains how an investor can come from nowhere in the business world to build a global empire. -- From Independent Publisher

Siklos occasionally succumbs to the hyperbole that characterizes his subject ... But these exaggerations aside, this biography ranks as one of the best in recent years of a media giant--in no small part because Black is such an outsize figure. -- The New York Times Book Review, Tom Goldstein

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