Mr Liz Murdoch

A husband and wife team are launching a British newspaper. So? Her father's name is Rupert. By Mathew Horsman

Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law studied Marxist economics at Vassar College in the United States. And he is from Ghana. The two facts fly resolutely in the face of the image Elkin Pianim exudes: that of a well- off, well-spoken, even drab merchant banker, with a swank Kensington address and a penchant for talking about "operating cash flows" and "investment criteria".

One itches to know how he gets on with his media baron father-in-law, well known for his arch-Conservative views, strict morality (except, of course, on page three of the Sun) and his often dismissive behaviour - even towards blood relations, let alone a relative by marriage.

But we won't know, certainly not from Pianim, because the subject of Rupert remained deeply latent - heavy, nonetheless, in the air - during a comfortable, rambling chat in the drab offices of a PR firm in central London last week.

Newly arrived on these shores from California, with his wife and venture capital partner Elizabeth Murdoch, Pianim is already doing deals. The first, a new newspaper pitched at Britain's black readers, will be launched on 18 November. The next project, about which the 26-year-old will say nothing, is likely to be in the US and could involve television.

Elkin Pianim, son of a Ghanian dissident, is in most ways the quintessential US-educated, deal-making "entrepreneur" - just what you'd expect in the Murdoch family. Elizabeth now heads up programming and operations at BSkyB, her father's UK-based satellite TV broadcaster. (She vies with brother Lachlan in Australia for the mantle "heir apparent".) With Elkin, she runs a company called Idaho Partners, with offices in the City and in San Francisco, where a third partner, Elkin's brother Nicholas, is still based. Capitalised at $10 million, the firm seeks investments in what Pianim calls "media-related companies with positive operating cash flows and established technologies". Translation? Idaho - a name chosen, Pianim says, because it's "easy to spell, easy to pronounce, not grandiose or silly" - isn't interested in high-tech, untried businesses. He explains: "If you make a mistake, and have to cut your losses, then there is something left to liquidate."

On that basis, you cannot fault his choice of a newspaper as Idaho's maiden UK investment. New Nation will be a splashy, 64-page tabloid - quite reminiscent, indeed, of Murdoch's now-defunct Today (the old man also knows when to cut and run). The newspaper is aimed, its editor says, at projecting a far more positive view of life in black Britain.

Pianim, who edited a campus newspaper at Vassar, where he first met his wife-to-be, hasn't got strong views about the content of the newspaper, its marketing strategy or even its precise target audience. All such questions he refers to Richard Adeshiyan, the 35-year-old editor, who used to work at the leading black newspaper, The Voice.

"We ran the numbers and we found the case compelling," Pianim says, sounding every inch the banker, when asked why he liked the New Nation concept. "The Voice sells 60,000 and we think the total market could easily be 30,000 more than that. We can break even on our investment with 30,000 readers." He dismisses The Voice as a tired force. "If you are a monopoly and you are faced with a decline in circulation over time, even in the absence of competition, then you clearly have a problem." New Nation will cost as much as pounds 900,000 to set up, and Pianim says he'll know in nine months whether it is going to work or not.

Is this the beginning of a media empire - one to match Rupert's? Just how does the son-in-law of one of the world's most powerful media barons in the world see his future?

"I know that I am being tested, and people are going to say: 'he's just a dilettante, just playing around'." But he insists Idaho has nothing to do with Rupert Murdoch or his money. "There is no family money, nothing from News Corporation," he claims. He and his brother find the deals, and all three partners vote on them. The Voice isn't convinced, and has already started a whispering campaign about its "Murdoch-backed" new rival.

The Idaho fund was given its financial foundation thanks to a lucrative two-year adventure in the US, where Elizabeth and Elkin ran two television stations. Bought for $35m in 1994 (with Rupert's backing), the stations were sold two years later, after much controversial cost-cutting in the Murdoch mould, for $47m, at a time when Pianim thought "the market for TV stations couldn't go any higher". The experience gave him a taste for wheeling and dealing, and was a lot more fun, he concedes, than his stints at consultancies in the US.

The TV deal also provided Elizabeth Murdoch with a track record in television - strong enough to convince her father to parachute her in to a key position at BSkyB, to the apparent unease of some senior Sky executives. She and Elkin had both also worked at Fox Television, her father's US company. But it was their joint management of the California stations that really attracted attention. All the same, Elkin himself concedes that many people might think the quick and profitable turnaround "was something of a fluke. We still have things to prove."

In the UK, Pianim sees the New Nation as the launch pad for a series of media investments, taking in pay-TV and niche magazines. Idaho has already considered lining up satellite carriage for a new digital channel, based on the New Nation concept. So has he approached BSkyB to secure a distribution deal? A sly smile creeps for the first time over his face. "I haven't. But someone I know well may have done".