Ezra Norton

Ezra Norton (8 April 1897 – 4 January 1967) was an Australian newspaper baron and businessman.

Early life Norton was born in the Sydney suburb of Watsons Bay, son of the proprietor of Truth, 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 The Scots College, Bellevue Hill. Valerie Lawson notes that "Norton often stayed away from school and was thrashed when he did attend."

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, each published on Sundays. Norton gained a licence from the Minister for Trade and Customs, Eric Harrison, to launch the Daily Mirror in Sydney in 1941.

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.

In 1957, Ezra Norton's horse Straight Draw won the Melbourne Cup.

Norton was incensed by the content of Cyril Pearl's non-fiction book, Wild Men of Sydney, which was highly critical of Norton's deceased father and two other political figures of his day, William Willis and Paddy Crick. Norton 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 the NSW Government denied that. His lawyers wrote to the book's publishers threatening legal action, but the book was published in 1958, sold well, and had reprints to at least 1970.

In October 1958, Norton and his partners sold their newspapers to the Fairfax group, from whom they were acquired by Rupert Murdoch in 1959. A large funeral was held at St Mary Magdalene Catholic Church at 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.