The professional contrarian Michael Wolff is coming out with his Murdoch biography The Man Who Owns the News early next year, and Vanity Fair runs some excerpts ahead of the launch. Among other juicy bits, as if you needed more proof, Murdoch really, really wants to own the New York Times, and was possibly the one responsible for spreading the rumor about Bloomberg being interested in buying NYT. This despite everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible.

Writes Wolff: “It’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple. It would be sweet revenge—because the Times for so long has made him the bogeyman and vulgarian. And wonderful to own not just one of America’s most important papers but both (he believes in monopolies). And the realization of his destiny: because the Times represents the ultimate in newspaper proprietorship…”