Murdoch puts rebranded Wall Street Journal at centre of publishing push Rupert Murdoch is to put the Wall Street Journal, rebranded as the WSJ, at the heart of its publishing strategy. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP The Wall Street Journal is to be rebranded WSJ and will be "at the centre" of Rupert Murdoch's new publishing company, the News Corporation founder has said. Murdoch told CNBC in an interview on Thursday that the New York business paper he bought in 2007 would be at the heart of the new operation, which will also embrace his three British titles - the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times. He added he was not sorry to have made the $5.7bn acquisition earlier. Analysts suggest the Wall Street Journal, which has 1.3 million paid digital subscribers, is a model for his newspaper publishing business and the decision to rebrand signals his determination to push the brand and the Dow Jones wire service, which plays second fiddle to Reuters in the financial news market. A spokeswoman said the Wall Street Journal Digital Network includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, SmartMoney.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingD.com, and WSJ Live, with content available across multiple platforms including iPhone, iPad, Android smartphone and Android tablet, Nook and Kindle Fire, among others. Between them, the brands have 56 million unique visitors per month, while WSJ. com averages more than 34 million visitors worldwide, according to Omniture analytics. Douglas McCabe, an analyst at media research firm Enders Analysis, said that although the WSJ is essentially a "business to business" product, it and the Times, which introduced a paywall two years ago, are "creeping towards something that might work as a business model for newspapers." The Times online editor, Phil Webster, last week told the Leveson inquiry that the decision to start charging for the paper online had been good for revenue and the website was now taking in more from advertising and subscriptions than it was when it was free and supported by commercials alone. Webster said Times Online had 130,000 subscribers, with another 170,000 getting access through a subscription to the print product. In an interview with the Financial Times following Thursday's confirmation that News Corp is being split into separate publishing and entertainment companies, Murdoch warned that newspapers are going to have to pay their way in future. With the exception of startups and bad years, "you're not going to see any print losses tolerated anywhere," he said. This could be bad news for the Times and the New York Post, which have been loss-making, although analysts point to the fact that Murdoch has tolerated a deficit at the London title since he took it over in 1981. Murdoch has said the new publishing company will be debt free, although he did not indicate how this would square the unquantifiable costs that will arise from litigation over phone hacking at the News of the World. He told the Times he would be an "active chairman" and admitted that he decided not to be chief executive of the publishing company because it would be bad for "public perception." There are only so many hours in the day. I will be a pretty active chairman, I'm sure. I think it would be difficult [for] public perception to name myself as chief executive of both companies," Murdoch said. He denied the decision to remove himself from an executive position at the publishing company was taking a step back from the business. "I have never felt fitter or better," he said.