Rupert Murdoch is happy with his company’s online efforts, particularly the London Times. “The outstanding example is the London Times. In good months it has 10 million unique users and is greatly expanding its franchise. It’s attracting enough advertising to more than pay its costs. All of our papers are doing interesting things on the web differently,” he is quoted as saying in the Guardian. Murdoch was skeptical of the spate of free newspapers ("frankly none of them I know of are very profitable but they are certainly extremely disruptive") and also reiterated that his newspaper business is still profitable: “The papers are all throwing off a lot of cash and we are very happy where we stand”. He’s not complacent about the threat of online though, gathering 50 top News Corp executives over the weekend in Monterey, California, “to learn what was working, what wasn’t working, what more we should be doing, where on these sites we can make additional revenue from transactions, all these sorts of things, what it’s doing to readership if anything”.

Hence the bid for Dow Jones, with Murdoch claiming that financial publishing wasn’t experiencing the same setbacks as other segments of the newspaper industry. “Financial publishing is something totally different, something you can charge highly for and customise...You can take that journalism and information and sell it across the world. It’s a quite different model.”

Murdoch has also said that the reason he sold his 7.5 percent stake in Fairfax was because the company was no longer at risk of falling into more competitive hands, but after the doubling its size by merging with Rural Press Fairfax no longer “need any help from us in their defense”, reports AP.

• Earnings: News Corp. Q1 Profit Up 6 Percent; Digital Revenues On Pace To Reach $500 Million
• Murdoch: DJ $5 Billion Offer “More Than Fair”; DJ Shares Fall
• News Corp. Sells 7.5 Stake In Fairfax