Newspaper companies in the United States and elsewhere are facing fundamental changes to their businesses as more people get their news from the Internet and other sources, and advertisers follow the market away from the paper-and-ink format.

Mr Murdoch, the Australian-born chairman and chief executive of News Corp, said in a speech broadcast on Sunday titled 'The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees' that the internet offered opportunities as well as challenges.

'Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise', Mr Murdoch said in a speech, recorded in the United States and relayed nationally by the Australian Broadcasting Corp It was the latest in an annual ABC series of lectures by a prominent Australian.

'Unlike the doom and gloomers, I believe that newspapers will reach new heights' in the 21st century, Mr Murdoch said.

Mr Murdoch grew a small city newspaper he inherited in 1953 into one of the world's largest media conglomerates that now includes 20th Century Fox, Fox News Channel and Sky Broadcasting, Dow Jones & Co and the online networking site MySpace.

He said people now were 'hungrier for information that ever before' and that papers have an edge over bloggers and other newcomers because they are more trusted by readers.

'I like the look and feel of newsprint as much as anyone', Mr Murdoch said. 'But our real business isn't printing on dead trees. It's giving our readers great journalism and great judgment'.

He cited two of his most prestigious newspapers, The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal, as examples of how newspaper brands can win large online readerships.

But he stressed that even these papers must recognise that online customers will decide what news they want and how it is delivered.

'To compete today, you can't offer the old one-size-fits-all approach to news', Mr Murdoch said. 'The challenge is to use a newspaper's brand while allowing readers to personalise the news for themselves and then deliver it in the ways that they want'.

To capitalise on online opportunities, Mr Murdoch said The Wall Street Journal was planning to offer three tiers of content online - free news, a subscriber-level service, and a third 'premium service' of reader-customisable 'high-end financial news and analysis.'

Mr Murdoch was scathing of journalists who predicted the death of newspapers as self-pitying and 'misguided cynics who are too busy writing their own obituary to be excited by the opportunity'.

'The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around', he said. 'It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world'. -- AP