As the media industry girds for war with Silicon Valley's powerful tech companies, its executives are coming to a painful realization: Rupert Murdoch saw it coming.

The octogenarian Aussie is seen in his industry as a rogue, a villain, and a bit of a Luddite, crouching behind his paywalls as the future arrives. His empire's most daring technical innovation might have been phone hacking.

But in recent months, the 86-year-old billionaire has emerged to his industry as something else: a hero.

Murdoch and his chief newspaper lieutenant, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, have taken a central role in the news industry's corporate war against Facebook and Google, technology leviathans that have eaten journalism's business model and forever changed how readers consume information.