If the phone hacking scandal gripping Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire has a familiar ring, it might be because you’ve heard the story before. Scrappy outsider turns modest newspaper business into international media conglomerate. Ambition turns to hubris. Mogul dramatically falls from grace.

From William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, many media barons’ stories follow a familiar arc.

“He’s one of a series,’’ said James Curran, a professor of communications at Goldsmiths University in London. “He seems to me to be in the same press baron tradition.’’

Before Murdoch came Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black, both of whose careers at the top of the British media establishment ended in disgrace. Before those two came Lord Beaverbrook, the Daily Express owner whose excesses were lampooned by Evelyn Waugh in his 1938 novel “Scoop.’’

Earlier still was the New York Journal’s William Randolph Hearst, who has become linked to the swashbuckling maverick at the center of Orson Wells’ 1941 classic “Citizen Kane.’’

There are huge differences: Unlike Black and Maxwell, Hearst, Murdoch, and Beaverbrook stayed successful. The Hearst Corp. is 125 years old; News Corp. is worth $60 billion; there’s still a statue to Beaverbrook in his Canadian hometown of Fredericton.

But there are important parallels, too.

Britain’s media tycoons came from abroad — Australia, Canada, or Eastern Europe — and rapidly became establishment figures, winning wealth, titles, and friends in high places.

Then, eventually, came the fall.

Beaverbrook’s attempt to create his own political party was knocked back in the 1930s, and he found himself cast adrift following the defeat of close ally Winston Churchill in 1945.