We cannot even find the original item. Just this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald referencing and more or less refuting it. Michael Wolff, quoted in the SMH story, did not even picked it up for Newser.

But Drudge now announces, just below the screaming climate conference "news," that those rumors—which never made it out of Australia, and were barely even noticed there—are totally untrue.

Which is a great way to get those rumors out there!

But what would Matt Drudge, Conservative New Media Superstar, have against Murdoch, Conservative Old Media Baron? Well, a lot of Drudge's favorite content comes from News Corp newspapers, and Rupert doesn't want anyone to read anything from those papers anymore on the internet, which is where Drudge lives.

So this is maybe a really passive aggressive way of tweaking Murdoch before he goes all-in on paywalls?

And, in not linking to or explaining anything, Matt has caused a million readers to turn to Rupert's second-least favorite website: Google. (His least fave is obviously MySpace.)

The official story will be that Jon Miller, the new broom from AOL, has swept aside MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and his team. But as always, Murdoch alone rules News Corp. And the decision must have been his.

Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, is the chair of MySpace China, and that professional relationship has spurred dangerous gossip which can't have helped DeWolfe's standing.

Four years after he bought MySpace, Murdoch has finally rid MySpace of the spammers and scammers who launched it. It is far past time — and yet probably the right moment. Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin's book, Stealing MySpace, has exposed MySpace's roots in porn, spam, and hacking. As the economic tide that boosted MySpace's advertising sales has receded, DeWolfe has been shown to be swimming naked. And Miller, as News Corp.'s newest Internet executive and the latest to have won Murdoch's ear, is in prime position to push out DeWolfe, whose contract expires this fall. (Just one question: If DeWolfe sidekick Tom Anderson is ousted, who will become every MySpace user's default first friend?)

DeWolfe always seemed more interested in throwing parties and dating celebrities than solving MySpace's hard problems. Growth has stagnated for the past year as Facebook has surged. The site's interface remains a shambolic wreck which fails at the most basic tasks, like remembering a user's login. Talented engineers, including COO Amit Kapur, have defected. Slingshot Labs, a MySpace spinoff meant to foster Silicon Valley-style innovation, is an industry laughingstock for launching a me-too celebrity gossip site rather than chasing genuinely new technologies. Given all this, it's possible that DeWolfe's friendship with Deng was the only thing that helped him last so long.

What now for the site? News Corp. is reportedly recruiting a new CEO already. Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta would be an excellent choice, if he can be wrested away from the music startup he's currently running. Or the company might place an internal candidate from the News Corp. empire, to provide the closer eye MySpace has long needed.

Ah, but those are tiresomely sensible choices. Here are two that would maximize the Murdoch family drama everyone loves: Install prodigal son Lachlan Murdoch. Or put Deng in charge.

Aside from her unofficial role as her husband's consigliere, Deng is the chief strategist of MySpace China. So it's hardly unusual for her to show up at the office. Indeed, since MySpace China's CEO abruptly quit last September and still hasn't been replaced amid ongoing boardroom drama, she might as well be running the show.

Yet MySpace China is more or less a failure, with less than 10 million users at last count, against rival Chinese services with more than 100 million users in the country.

Meanwhile, there is what looks like an ongoing smear campaign suggesting that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and Deng, who both serve on MySpace China's board, had an affair — one that some claim is spread by Roger Ailes, a rival executive at News Corp. We have to wonder: If MySpace China had a business worth talking about, would anyone be dwelling on this rumor?

This insane theory, though, goes like this: the true target of the smear isn't Wendi at all, but rather Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson, and one of the rising golden boys of the News Corp. empire and therefore a threat to Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. Thomson, whose life story is uncannily similar to Rupert's, also has a Chinese wife, Wang Ping, who happens to be friends with Wendi. Thus, the damaging suggestion about Thomson would be that Ping had aided and abetted Wendi in her dalliance. The only person who'd try to pull off such a crazy scheme? Naturally, News Corp.'s resident master of dark arts and head of Fox News, Roger Ailes. Which brings us full circle back to Wolff's book, which has supposedly caused a rift between Ailes and Murdoch because it, as the New York Times reported in October, "suggests that Mr. Murdoch is at times embarrassed by Fox News, which he owns, and its chief executive, Roger Ailes, and that he often shares 'the general liberal apoplexy,' as Mr. Wolff writes in the book, toward Fox News and its perceived conservative slant."

So there you have it. A crazy theory so crazy it could be true (but probably isn't!). I'm going to head off to Wolff's party now and see if I can dig up something actually substantial. If you know anything about who's behind the Wendi rumor, please email me.

The rumor itself is actually at least 18 months old — we first heard it last year after a reporter at a major business magazine got the News Corp. nuclear treatment when he rang up the flacks to ask whether they had made out at a party — largely spurred by Deng being named the "chief of strategy" at MySpace China last summer, putting her in close (business) contact with DeWolfe. And then there were reports that DeWolfe was using his friendship with Deng in his negotiations for a new compensation package with News Corp.

The first time in the most recent spate of tips was in the form of an an email from someone using the Dark Knight pseudonym "Harvey Dent" and was pre-written in gossip-columnese ("What media mogul billionaire’s wife has been guilty of so many sexual escapades that she is the talk of LA?"), but it also made some amateurish mistakes, such as referring to "Wendy Deng." The second tipster came from inside a media organization that's locked horns with News Corp. plenty of times in the past. The third was the most aggressive. Their first account was that they had heard that someone with a grudge against Murdoch had hired a private investigator who had discovered that Deng was involved with "Chris DeWitt." Asked why someone was digging dirt on Rupert, they said it was "more of a personal interest."

None of the new tipsters have offered any new evidence to made us think it's true. Like the Jossip item, all leaned heavily on the detail that they're hooking up at 141 Prince St. But that's hardly a secret address. since that's where the Murdochs live when they're in New York. And as someone familiar with the Murdochs points out, they sold that apartment in 2005 and now live on Fifth Ave. So color us skeptical. Though, of course, if you know more than our previous tipsters, we're interested in that, too.

What does matter, according to “The Man Who Owns the News,” is his third wife, Wendi Deng, who is 38 years his junior and controls him to the point of reading his e-mail.

(“Let’s recast this story as a triumphal, even uplifting tale of pluck and achievement,” Mr. Wolff writes, about how she came to marry such a powerful older man. “She’s not Becky Sharp, she’s Pip in ‘Great Expectations.’ ”)

That little detail about Deng resonates especially strongly since it reinforces the picture the Journal painted of her in 2000 (original) as a deft and serial manipulator of powerful men:

Her ticket out of China came in 1987, when she met a Los Angeles couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry... Mrs. Cherry says she had grown increasingly suspicious about Ms. Deng's relationship with her husband. Mrs. Cherry recalls discovering a cache of photographs her husband had taken of Ms. Deng in coquettish poses back in his hotel room in Guangzhou. Mr. Cherry confirms he had become infatuated with the young woman...

The Cherrys divorced, and Jake Cherry married Ms.Deng in February 1990. But that union didn't last. Mr. Cherry says that about four months after the wedding, he told Ms. Deng to leave because she had started spending time with a man named David Wolf...

Former colleagues describe Ms. Deng as having been adept at juggling the interests of News Corp.'s various units, which like to operate independently... She is said to have shown no hesitation about walking unannounced into a senior executive's office to discuss the latest Chinese entrepreneur she had met or government official she had contacted...

In early 1998, she first appeared at [Murdoch's] side, acting as his interpreter when he traveled to Shanghai and Beijing. By the summer of 1998, the Star TV staff was buzzing about romance between the pair. After dinner meetings in Hong Kong, they were observed holding hands. In May, Mr. Murdoch had separated from his wife of 31 years, Anna. The split surprised even his closest aides, who say they hadn't seen any sign of a rupture.

Can't wait to see how the book is reviewed in the Post and Journal!

Romance novelist Melanie Craft has been Mrs. Larry Ellison since December 2003.

Wendi Deng (that's 邓文迪 to you) isn't just Mrs. Rupert Murdoch. She's chief strategist for MySpace China.

(Photos by Patrick McMullen, WENN, Daniel Deme/WENN)

The Times said Holmes was "looking perfect," but Fabsugar, even while catching the Superman reference in the outfit, wrote, "hot mess... just too reminiscent of '80s prom."

Here's comedian Sarah Silverman, "wearing a polka-dot teacup skirt from Dolce & Gabbana, paired with filthy black-and-white fingerless knit gloves, which she described as 'flair from my backpack that I bought at one of those mall stores for $9... The woman from Dolce & Gabbana said, "Please don’t wear those." I did.'"

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch (background, left) with wife Wendi. Australia's The Age: "Love the colours and the fabric... it's the shape that worries me. It's a bit ''tip me over, pour me out."

Designer Marc Jacobs leaving with Sofia Coppola, because if he'd taken a boy it would have just ended in a big pissy fight over three-ways. No one dared to say anything mean about their outfits.

USA Today (ever the fashion source): "Dolce & Gabbana decked out Scarlett Johansson, who made news on Monday when she announced that she and actor Ryan Reynolds were engaged. Although she wasn't flaunting her engagement ring as she walked the carpet holding hands with her designer hosts, it was probably one of the most-talked-about accessories of the evening."

The actual review isn't harsh. The meanest thing it says is that Murdoch failed in China. But with a title like Rupert's Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife, the criticism is hard to avoid. (The piece also mentions that his young wife, Wendi Deng, could be a gold-digger. A shocking assertion, perhaps, to the blind.)

Still, the editor of the Review sent the author an email on Thursday saying, "I'm afraid I am getting cold feet on this one—I've just gotten a copy of the book, and it looks more like the work of a disgruntled ex-employee, rather than an analysis of the business." In fact, the review comes to the opposite conclusion, saying, "the reader still comes away with a nagging feeling that the author has held back."

Murdoch is so powerful that he doesn't even need to kill negative pieces himself. His minions will do it themselves to protect their overlord.

So let this be a lesson. When the Wall Street Journal weekend edition comes out with a flattering profile of the Murdoch's marriage, be suspicious. Larger forces are at work.

Editor Gets 'Cold Feet' On A Critique Of Murdoch [IHT]
A Tell-All Book About Rupert Murdoch [Asia Sentinel]

Apparently, Web developers, like vampires, shun warmth and sunlight. Unable to find enough talented engineers in L.A., MySpace has decided to open up more fogbound digs to tap San Francisco's pool of snooty, entitled, arrogant Webheads. Welcome to San Francisco, Rupe! You can't really claim to run an Internet company until you've been sneered at by a 23-year-old developer, so enjoy it. To celebrate the move, the company will throw a shindig next week at the Museum of Modern Art, right in time to attract the crowd attending the Web 2.0 Summit.

One lingering question: Will Chris DeWolfe, Rupert Murdoch, and Wendi Deng — wife of Murdoch and, as chairwoman of MySpace China, DeWolfe's colleague — all attend the party together? [Editor's note: Awkwaaarrrd!]

Her Wikipedia entry....

was the subject of frantic revisions a few weeks back when Fortune hack Eric Ellis wrote a 10,000-word profile of her for an Australian magazine. An anonymous contributor operating from the IP address 206.15.98.236... [deleted] sections of the Wikipedia entry which referred to Ellis's piece as a 'well-researched' exposé 'that Deng herself and Murdoch have been making every effort to suppress.' A quick search discloses that 206.15.98.236 is in fact the IP address of one Jason Ripkey - an IT coordinator at the New York Headquarters of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation!

Private Eye [Article not online]