Les Hinton’s memoir “An Untidy Life: What I Saw at the Media Revolution” (Scribe US), out Tuesday, is a love letter to journalism, an affectionate recounting of his childhood and more than 50 years spent working at News Corporation for the likes of The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, Fox Television Stations, the New York Post and TV Guide — from South Australia to London’s Fleet Street to the Manhattan of the 1970s and beyond. His career began at age 15, when he first started working for Rupert Murdoch as a copy boy at The Adelaide News, and ended in 2011 when he stepped down as chief executive of Dow Jones in the wake of the News International phone-hacking scandal.

The book is filled with great anecdotes. A chapter called “Johnny Rotten’s Leather Jacket” recounts a night spent partying with the Sex Pistols legend when Hinton was working at the New York bureau of The Sun. He was invited by rock photographer Joe Stevens to come hang out at a Greenwich Village apartment with Rotten and Stevens; the trio ended up moving to CBGB, where Hinton struck up a conversation with “a convivial man with thick, dark-fringed hair.” It was Johnny Ramone, lead guitarist of the Ramones — not that Hinton was any the wiser. “He’s no f—ng idea who he’s talking to,” remarked Rotten, amused, to Stevens. Later that night, Hinton ended up asleep back at the apartment. “I awoke to two camera flashes and Rotten’s cackling,” he recalls — Rotten had posed two inflatable sex dolls next to Hinton for a prank (pictured). The next morning, piecing together the bizarre evening, Hinton wondered why he’d been invited in the first place. As Stevens explained to him later: “We were both out of money and starving, and I told Johnny you’d be good company. Johnny said it would be a good idea to use [the photos] to blackmail you, but I think he was joking.”