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Anthea Disney, Well-Respected Top News Corp. Executive, Leaving at Year’s End

Dec 10, 2009  •  Post A Comment

Anthea Disney, News Corp’s EVP of Content, will be leaving the company at the end of the year, it was announced today.

Disney, who was in charge of TV Guide when News Corp. owned it, has been with the company 20 years.

At various times she also served as President and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers and as Chairman and CEO of News America Publishing Group.

She was also in charge, with then MCI executive Scott Kurnit, for a brief period in 1995 and 1996, a joint venture between News Corp. and MCI that was intended to be a major player in the digital content space. [Full disclosure: this reporter worked that venture, which never had a formal name, for three months.] The venture never got any traction and folded within a year.

A statement from News Corp. said Disney is retiring and that she "plans to counsel young female entrepreneurs through a non-profit she recently co-founded in Northwest Connecticut, the Women’s Enterprise Initiative. It will bring together seasoned female corporate executives with aspiring young women to help fund new business ideas."

In the same statement News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch said, “Anthea’s keen creative instincts are equal to her business acumen, a combination which is hard to find in an executive and one that has made her a dynamic leader at our company for many years. She has impeccable judgment and taste and I have relied on her counsel across just about all of our content businesses. I will miss her immensely but understand her desire to shift gears at this point in her life.”

–Chuck Ross

3 Comments

  1. I would like to start my own blog one day. This was a really nice blog that you made here. Keep up the success 😛

  2. Interesting thoughts here. I appreciate you taking the time to share them with us all. It’s people like you that make my day 🙂

  3. Does this get updated? Where is Anthea Disney today?
    How did it work out with the WEI?
    I have noted that she is now with the bank; HSBC, ( listed as being on the Board of Directors, USA Holdings ).
    Another person to note on the same board is John Thornton. Is he also a graduate of the Tsinghua University? Their alumni are doing great and good things around the world. The University graduates their students with a solid education and a drive committed to economic and world social development. A bank that does that? I have read that they are going to gift $25.00 ( twenty-five US dollars) US to Focus Adolescent Services, http://www.Focusas.com to help save the lives of American children and to allow Focusas to expand their free aid to the one hundred plus nations who are crying out for their help. In this depression more children and their families are suffering. To complicate the issue (more/further) is that gifts to those groups who carry the weight and do the most have seen a massive reduction in their revenue. I have followed the work of Focus Adolescent Services for two decades. They can squeeze a nickel into two dimes and function; while some groups suck-up millions and cry “not-enough,” those millions have been bundled and hedge-funded needing more than a little pruning, hells bells they need a chain saw! The red cross and the un’s unesco should give 10% of their take to Focus Adolescent Services. The un really needs a person who is just half of what Danny Kaye was to promote their efforts. The great Danny Kaye was a man of heart, love, and compassion. Is the un using the Danny Kaye Society as it should be used? A good man is hard to find in 2012.A Danny Kaye comes around every hundred years or so. I wish some one would just monitor the spending by the un for one fiscal year. They dropped, for example, 35 Million Dollars US to train women of the Herati Provence of Afghanistan to “grow silk worms.” It was grow worms grow, make the threads of golden silk. At the same time, the family owned weavers of silk in Herat,are dying out, their looms rot from sitting. For hundreds of years they sat on the Old Silk Road making the finest silk in the world; yes HSBC. finer than any made in China, ( I feel). Grow all the worms you want, spend another 35 Million then walk down the streets of Herat, once lined with ancient trees, and all the silk sold in their market place is silk that has been produced in China. Unesco would like a modest sum from the United States congress. I believe it is only a blink of their eye, a finger to their nose, some 135M. Gift 10% of that instead to a Focusas.com or a few others and let us see how far the money will go and how many people will be sustained for many generations to come. The quick-fix is no longer in vogue; trash your old tv guide, plant a tree and imagine it when it grows to one hundred years of age. That is more of the dynamic of help in this century.

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