In short: A historical illustration of the "quality of the people" leg, not a view on the stock today: News Corp and the New York Times "both had the same market cap at one point and then like 30 years later… the New York Times basically had the same market cap and News Corp was up 80x… he had a very entrepreneurial person, whether you like him or dislike him."
News Corp appears only as one half of a 30-year natural experiment. It and the New York Times started with roughly the same market value; three decades later the Times was worth about the same and News Corp was worth roughly 80 times more.
Mayer's reading is that the difference was a person, not an industry: "he had a very entrepreneurial person, whether you like him or dislike him, and did a lot of things and created a lot of value that way." It is his evidence for the second leg of his framework — that the quality and drive of the people running the business is not a soft factor but a primary driver of long-run returns.
No opinion is offered on News Corp as an investment today.
8:34But I'll say what hasn't changed. I think the core premise of just holding on to businesses that generate high returns on capital for a very long period of time — that's been a core, it's hard to get away from. And then which always plays into this also is the quality of the people involved in the business. So there are more examples I go through in this book where you have a particular entrepreneurial person who makes a difference. I remember there's one specific example I talk about, the New York Times and News
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.