Rees-Mogg was editor of "The Times" from 1967 to 1981. In a 1967 editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?", he criticised the severity of the custodial sentence for Mick Jagger on a drugs offence. With colleagues, he attempted a buyout of Times Group Newspapers in 1981 in order to stop its sale by the Thomson Organisation to Rupert Murdoch, but was unsuccessful. Murdoch replaced him as editor with Harold Evans. Rees-Mogg wrote a comment column for "The Independent" from its foundation in the autumn of 1986 until near the end of 1992, when he rejoined "The Times", where he remained a columnist until shortly before his death. In his "Memoirs", published in 2011, he wrote of Murdoch: "Looking back, he has been an excellent proprietor for the Times, but also for Fleet Street."