Watsons Bay
Watsons Bay is a harbourside, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Watsons Bay is located 11 km north-east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. ...
, son of the proprietor of ''
Truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belie ...
'', John Norton (1858–1916) and Ada McGrath (1871–1960), whom he married some weeks later. During his childhood, he was subject to his father's drunken assaults on his mother and himself. He was educated at Scots College, Bellevue Hill. Valerie Lawson notes that "Norton often stayed away from school and was thrashed when he did attend." After failing to matriculate twice, he was sent to Christian Brothers' College, Waverley, where he was treated better.
Norton learned the newspaper trade in his father's business. His father died in 1916, but had disinherited his wife and Ezra and left the bulk of his estate to Ezra's 9-year-old sister, Joan Norton (1907–1940). His mother Ada Norton (née McGrath) persuaded the New South Wales Parliament to backdate the new Testator's Family Maintenance Act to take effect before his father's death. Under this legislation, she succeeded in having his will rewritten in 1920 so that she and Ezra Norton each received a third of his inheritance, allowing Ezra Norton to gain control of Truth and Sportsman Ltd the publisher of the Sydney ''Truth'', the Melbourne ''Truth'', sister papers in Brisbane and Perth, and the ''
Sydney Sportsman
''The Sydney Sportsman'' was a horse racing and sporting newspaper published in Sydney, Australia from 1900 to 1960. It continues to be published as ''The Sportsman''.
History
''The Sydney Sportsman'' was first published on 3 October 1900 by Jo ...
'', each published on Sundays.
Career
Norton attempted to widen his papers' range by adding a little discussion of culture, but they soon moved back to their traditional coverage of sport, crime, and divorce. Frank Packer's launch of the Sunday Telegraph in 1939 undermined the viability of the Sydney ''Truth'' and he attempted to fight back by establishing a daily paper to compete with the ''Telegraph'' and "The Sun" in which he succeeded despite wartime paper rationing. Frank Packer and Ezra Norton were bitter rivals in business for many years. On Derby Day 1939, Ezra Norton and Frank Packer fought it out literally, with fists, in the members' enclosure at
Randwick Racecourse
Royal Randwick Racecourse is a racecourse for horse racing located in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Randwick Racecourse is Crown Land leased to the Australian Turf Club and known to many Sydney racegoers as headquarter ...
Eric Harrison
Sir Eric John Harrison, (7 September 1892 – 26 September 1974) was an Australian politician and diplomat. He was the inaugural deputy leader of the Liberal Party (1945–1956), and a government minister under four prime ministers. He was lat ...
to launch the ''Daily Mirror'' in Sydney in 1941. Ezra Norton was awarded the Coronation Medal in May 1937 for Commerce.
In 1957, Ezra Norton's horse ''Straight Draw'' won the
Melbourne Cup
The Melbourne Cup is a Thoroughbred horse race held in Melbourne, Australia. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria as part of the Melb ...
.
In October 1958, Norton and his partners sold their newspapers to the Fairfax group from whom they were acquired by
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
in 1959.
Norton was incensed by the content of a
Cyril Pearl
Cyril Alston Pearl (11 April 1904 – 3 March 1987) was an Australian journalist, editor, author, social historian, wit and television personality.
Life and career
He was born in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria on 11 April 1904, to Je ...
book highly critical of Norton's deceased father and was "widely believed" to have lobbied the NSW State Government for changes that in 1958 extended defamation law to cover the reputation of the dead.
Although Norton retained some business interests, by 1960 he had virtually retired from the business world. He resided at a waterfront mansion at
Vaucluse
Vaucluse (; oc, Vauclusa, label= Provençal or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
in his
Vaucluse
Vaucluse (; oc, Vauclusa, label= Provençal or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.Rose Bay and his body was buried with his father, mother, and sister in the Norton family plot at South Head Cemetery with Catholic Rites.
He was survived by his wife Peggy, their daughter Mary and his adopted son, Dr. John Stanley Norton.
His estate was valued in 1967 at $4,000,000.Hall, Sandra. Tabloid Man (Ezra Norton's Biography). 2008
Further reading
* Sandra Hall. ''Tabloid Man – The Life and Times of Ezra Norton.'' Published by Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, Australia. 2008. ().
Ezra
Ezra (; he, עֶזְרָא, '; fl. 480–440 BCE), also called Ezra the Scribe (, ') and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra, was a Jewish scribe ('' sofer'') and priest (''kohen''). In Greco-Latin Ezra is called Esdras ( grc-gre, Ἔσδρα ...