"We're scouring the Far East, and we're looking very intently at the Middle East," says Sir O'Reilly. Newspaper circulation is up across the Middle East; in Kuwait it shot up 27 percent in 2007.  

O'Reilly has placed a bet that there's plenty of life left in that so-called legacy medium when it comes to these countries. And he may be right: While ad revenue at U.S. newspapers shrank 3 percent last year and Britain's circulation fell by 10 percent, China saw a 16 percent growth in ad revenues and India's total circulation grew 11 percent. Advertisers spent $2.15 billion in India last year, where I.N.M.'s Dainik Jagran sells 2.5 million copies a day, nearly equal that of USA Today, which sells 2.25 million copies on a daily basis.

For Independent News & Media, these figures have translated into almost half of its revenue: Ireland accounts for a third and Britain pulls in 22 percent, but South Africa, India, and others bring in the rest.

"The view in New York and London is that newspapers are dead," says Paul Gooden, a media analyst at ABN Amro in London. "Actually, in an emerging economy, they're a great place to be if you are a Unilever or a General Motors launching a new brand."

But if O'Reilly has managed to identify in these emerging markets a strategy for improving the bottom line, he may seem on the face of it an unlikely candidate now. Though as chairman and C.E.O. of Heinz he pushed the company into dozens of new global markets, he's 72 this year, and with friends like Nelson Mandela and among his homes a château in France, he could easily be expected to live the grand life of a knighted retiree, looking back over a career as a successful business tycoon.

His friends say otherwise. Tony, as he's called, "works tirelessly, doing his best work at 1 a.m., after the dinner guests leave," says friend and former Heinz president David Sculley. And even as he was working at Heinz, O'Reilly was also C.E.O. of I.N.M. beginning in 1973, when he bought the Irish Independent.

O'Reilly may need to "work tirelessly" now in part because of the threat to his leadership. In what the Irish press calls a "battle of the billionaires," O'Reilly goes into I.N.M.'s annual shareholder meeting tomorrow "upset," about the situation, according to his associates, and Barry Dixon notes there are emotional issues involved on both sides.

Most likely, O'Brien's stake could increase to 29.9 percent, putting him on equal footing with O'Reilly, or I.N.M.'s board may agree to give O'Brien a chunk of the company (possibly the business in Australia and Asia).

But even if O'Reilly retains control of the company, his work is not yet done. Measured against Murdoch's success in the business, where revenue from his newspapers rose 38 percent last year, I.N.M. is falling well short with its own 4 percent growth. And some analysts are skeptical, too, expecting its trajectory to slow. ABN Amro predicts a 3 to 4 percent growth rate in earnings per share, down from the 5 to 8 percent it had predicted for 2008.

Is O'Reilly showing any public concern? "Res ipsa loquitur," he says—these things speak for themselves.