" The Murdoch family, in the throes of reshaping its media empire, is bringing on a lieutenant with experience in chaotic environments: President Trump’s former communications director, Hope Hicks.
Starting next year, Ms. Hicks, one of the most recognizable alumni of Mr. Trump’s White House, will become the chief communications officer of Fox, the new entity to be spun out of the Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox.
She plans to move to Los Angeles in connection with her new job. A native of Greenwich, Conn., she had been living in Manhattan since leaving the White House this year.
Ms. Hicks, 29, was an obscure public relations aide with zero political experience when Mr. Trump plucked her from his family business in 2015 to serve as press secretary for his nascent presidential bid. What followed was a remarkable ascent, as Ms. Hicks weathered staff shake-ups and a knives-out office environment to become the closest aide to the most powerful man in the world.
Her new role also signals the ambitions of Lachlan Murdoch, the elder son of the mogul Rupert Murdoch, as he prepares to lead the next version of his family’s empire.
The reconstituted Fox corporation includes Fox Business, Fox Sports and a national broadcast network. But its central asset is Fox News, the highly profitable cable network with close ties to the Trump administration. The channel’s prime-time stars are relentless boosters of Mr. Trump, and its former co-president, Bill Shine, became Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff for communications in July.
The addition of Ms. Hicks to Lachlan Murdoch’s core management team offers him another boost in replicating his father’s influence at the upper echelons of government.
In the West Wing, Ms. Hicks was seen by many journalists and network executives as a key point of contact, able to channel the thinking of her tempestuous boss and single-handedly wrangle time for interviews with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office.
In addition to her A-list contacts in the news media, Ms. Hicks has a track record of working well with heirs to dynastic families — a desirable trait for the Murdoch clan, whose financial and personal lives play out in the public eye.
Ms. Hicks, who declined to comment for this article, advised Ivanka Trump on her fashion and real estate businesses before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign. At the White House, she was one of the few aides who could anticipate, and sometimes temper, Mr. Trump’s mercurial moods.
For the Fox empire, it is a moment of transition.
In a $71.3 billion deal expected to be completed next year, the Walt Disney Company is set to acquire the bulk of the Murdochs’ entertainment and media assets, substantially altering the Hollywood landscape. For Rupert Murdoch and his children, the deal represents a significant downsizing, and a shift in focus to news and sports.
In dealing with the press, the Murdochs have long relied on the guidance of Julie Henderson, the chief communications officer of 21st Century Fox. Ms. Henderson is expected to step down from her role with the Murdochs after the Disney sale is completed. Her deputy in New York, Nathaniel Brown, is also opting not to continue with the new company.
Fox announced Ms. Hicks’s appointment alongside a new role for Danny O’Brien, a former senior aide to Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president, and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who will lead the company’s Washington-based government relations team.
“Together they will define and project Fox’s voice to our relevant communities,” Viet Dinh, Fox’s chief legal and policy officer, wrote in a statement.
A former model and college lacrosse star, Ms. Hicks cut her teeth in public relations at Hiltzik Strategies, the high-powered New York communications firm. She worked there with Joshua Raffel, who also ended up in the Trump administration and recently landed his own post-White House job, handling communications for the e-cigarette giant Juul.
Ms. Hicks’s White House tenure was not without controversy. Her role in a statement by Donald Trump Jr., about a 2016 meeting with Russian operatives at Trump Tower, attracted attention from federal investigators, and she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee shortly before leaving the West Wing.
But unlike other former advisers, she remains close with Mr. Trump — traveling with him and his team on Air Force One in August — and is held in high esteem by many members of the current West Wing staff.
“Fox won’t find anyone smarter or more talented than Hope Hicks,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, tweeted on Monday. “So happy for my friend. They are beyond lucky to have you and the East Coast misses you already.”