Last night, John Battelle interviewed Rupert Murdoch (pictured in the middle) and MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe (left) at the Web 2.0 Summit. Rupert Murdoch said that he wants to improve the recently acquired Wall Street Journal by expanding the paper’s arts, fashion, general and international sections. Then Battelle suggested that this would mean “killing” the New York Times. “That would be nice!”, the media mogul answered. Chris De Wolfe confirmed rumors that MySpace will open its platform in a couple of months, just like Facebook did. When asked if Google was a “threat or a friend”, Rupert Murdoch stated that Google is a threat to old media, and even if the Google ads revenue is an important one for MySpace, “it is not a big chunk”.

The conversation was then followed by a party sponsored by MySpace at the SF Museum of Arts where many old and new media celebrities showed up: Rupert Murdoch, Chris DeWolfe, Chad Hurley (YouTube), Phil Bronstein (Executive Vice president and Editor, San Francisco Chronicle), etc.