Ezra Norton

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

Norton was born in the Sydney suburb of Watsons Bay, son of the proprietor of the 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 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, each published on Sundays.

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. Norton gained a licence from the Minister for Trade and Customs, Eric Harrison to launch the Daily Mirror in Sydney in 1941. Ezra Norton was awarded the Coronation Medal in May 1937 for Commerce.

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