News Corp. debuts new logo

Fresh off its parent company split, the new-News Corp. has debuted a new logo.

The company’s board approved a split last week and all of the conglomerate’s entertainment holdings will move under the corporate umbrella of the “21st Century Fox” moniker while news and book publishing divisions will remain under the News Corp. name.

The new logo features a handwriting inspired rendition of the words “News Corp” set in plain black type. The script is said to be inspired by the handwriting of Rupert Murdoch and his father.

While it’s a neat idea to make use of the company’s history for inspiration, the choice of handwriting for a corporate logo seems a bit out of place.

NBC parent company Comcast debuted a new logo in December, with a rather strange choice of typeface as well.

Here’s the memo announcing the new logo and official split:

Welcome to the new News Corp. We are a new company with a proud history and a wonderfully exciting future.

From the moment of our inception on June 28th, we will be a business of incredible scale and success, an unrivaled global network of valuable, powerful and complementary brands.

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These exceptional brands, coupled with you, our immensely talented teams around the world, the balance sheet that is our financial foundation and our well-known relentless, restless spirit of invention, pave the way for our bright future. We will reach more people than ever before through our digital platforms.

Today we are unveiling a new logo that will be our emblem for this future. The name is historic and the script is based on the writing of Rupert and his father, who have provided us all with not only a name, but a remarkable professional platform.

As part of a global company, we are inevitably dispersed around the world, but I know that we share a vision of the contribution we can make to our customers and our shareholders. That vision will be driven by our collaboration and sharing of ideas – in essence, we must aim to be so much more than the sum of our distinguished parts.

In our company, creativity is not the charge of the few, but the mission of us all. Too often the very word “creativity” elicits elitism – I want creativity not to be a concept, but our quest to work more productively for our readers, our customers and our partners. Let us never forget that we are, at heart, a content company. Through content, we will strive to inform, educate and inspire. As we do this together, I want to promise you that hierarchy will not define your contribution or our willingness to listen. However we measure the distance between us in miles (or kilometers), there is a proximity of purpose.

We at the new News have three shared objectives: creating great content; delivering great content; and selling great content. And so we will strive with the energy and the curiosity that have characterized the company since its foundation and that must characterize the new News. We will cultivate a start-up sensibility even though we already work for the world’s most established and prestigious diversified media and information services company.

This approach calls for continued aggressive digital expansion, as well as innovation and new initiatives within even our most well-established market and sector leaders. We will boldly try new businesses and models, unafraid to learn, confident of overall success together. We have a tremendous track record of breakthroughs in places discounted or disregarded by others and our future will be no different.

In the days ahead, Keisha Smith, our Chief Human Resources Officer, will be in touch with more information about the new management team in New York and the executives around the world who are running our great businesses. We will also be able to share more financial details with you as we meet investors on our roadshow.

Today we invite you to learn about the new News Corp. The link to our microsite below officially introduces you to our businesses and the leadership team. We encourage you to get to know more about the parts of the company with which you are least familiar. We also invite you to listen to the live webcast of the Investor Day in New York where we will unveil our company to the investor and analyst community.

Our resolute aim for the new News is that we increase our strength as a business. We will only achieve this by being passionate, principled and purposeful in our endeavors.

This is an exciting time for our company. I am genuinely honored to be your leader and look forward to talking with you more in the coming weeks.

Robert Thomson
Chief Executive

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