As Media Matters investigative reporter Joe Strupp noted Monday, "[t]he battle is on" between Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and the New York Times:

The Wall Street Journal launched its new 'Greater New York' section today with all the fanfare of a political campaign kick-off.

Taking over the grand ballroom of The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, the Journal feted dozens of guests with a breakfast of bagels, quiche, coffee, Danish and other goodies. Large screens in the room promoted the new section's name, while top guns Les Hinton, CEO; Robert Thomson, managing editor; and Michael Rooney, chief revenue officer, headlined the event.

As the New York Observer's John Koblin writes in a post on the Media Mob blog, later Monday evening Murdoch downplayed the WSJ's ability to “kill” the Times at a Gotham Hall “launch party of The Journal's Greater New York section.” The News Corp head also managed to get in a jab at Times publish Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s expense:

With the war starting, we wondered what Mr. Murdoch thought about Times publisher's Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s reaction to the whole dust-up involving what happened at Sir Martin Sorrell's apartment a few weeks ago, when Mr. Sulzberger and Journal editor Robert Thomson met for the first time. (Mr. Thomson described their conversation to us in an interview, and Mr. Sulzberger, through a spokesman, said Mr. Thomson lied.)

Mr. Murdoch's swatted the air disgustedly with his right hand, and said, “He should get a life.”

The Times recently ran an ad campaign in which it provided stats about its dominance over The Journal with women readers in the New York area. What did Mr. Murdoch think?

“Bullshit,” he said. “We have more women readers-total-than they do nationally.”

Did he feel he could kill The New York Times?

“You can't kill The New York Times,” he said. “It'll be here forever.”

I guess if anyone should know about the ability to “kill” off a news outlet, it would be Murdoch. After all, this is the same News Corp chief that has presided over the decline of many newspapers and other entities like MySpace. As Newser.com's Michael Wolff noted in February, News Corp has “shouldered” the “losses” of the Times of London and the New York Post “for more than 30 years (representing, quite possibly, the largest aggregate loss of any media properties ever.)”