@RupertMurdoch managed to stay quiet last week while Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp., was doing last-minute maneuvers behind the scene, then publicly pitching the break up of his company.

But his Twitter alter ego is back with a vengeance, starting Saturday with a sotto voce tweet about the past week:

Tough week, but went better than I expected.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) June 30, 2012

Then came a Sunday barrage over 5 hours or so as Murdoch tweeted from the country he verbally shivved Thursday during his media rounds — when he said repeatedly proclaimed that he would not make any more major investments in England. He meant, perhaps, simply to tamp down the possibility that News Corp. would try again for BSkyB but came off as starkly negative on the country where News Corp. still holds 39.1 percent of the pay TV company, including Sky News, and News International, with the Times of London, the Sun and their Sunday editions. It’s also the country where his company, his reputation and that of his son James currently faces the most jeopardy both legal and legislative.

London again. 8 lively, different Sunday papers. Some great writing, some fun, some hysterical but happy change from boring Sunday NYT.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

So far, so good. That was followed by a bit of unsolicited advice to Prime Minister David Cameron (it was Mitt Romney’s turn in June) — then he couldn’t resist the tabloid news of the day:

Scientology back in news.Very weird cult, but big, big money involved with Tom Cruise either number two or three in hierarchy.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

That done, as he has on several occasions since taking to Twitter over the winter holidays, Murdoch answered questions:

@gramercypark many emerging, but Google twins, Jack Dorsey stand out. Look for next wave to be in biotech.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

Sticking through the attacks on his credibility and ethics:

@dr_henry77my folks! Come off it, let’s have serious discussion.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

But. like many of his news outlets, Murdoch couldn’t stay away from Scientology, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes:

Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

A little later came:

Since Scientology tweet hundreds of attacks.Expect they will increase and get worse and maybe threatening.Still stick to my story.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

And a question about whether he is a Christian. Murdoch replied: “I try to be.”

He also drew a line between Scientology (“evil”), Mormonism (“a mystery”) and Mormons (“not evil”). Lucky for him given that he appears to be backing a Mormon for president.

@shakircMormonism a mystery to me, but Mormons certainly not evil.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

Alan Murray, the Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor, chimed in:

Too busy readingthe Scientology tweets!“@keptsimple81: Why everyone retweeting @rupertmurdoch? Why haven’t I seen @alansmurray tweet?”

— Alan Murray (@alansmurray) July 1, 2012

Murdoch grabbed the chance to promote the Journal and went off the air (for now):

@alansmurrayRight!Yesterday’s WSJ iPad app really great. New software, great graphics.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

That’s just a sampling of the two dozen-plus tweets over six hours. The whole is a canny, conversational stream of consciousness.

No backing off the he-said-what comments that are getting the most attention but also a sincere effort to communicate with people he might not otherwise reach. I’ve watched a lot of people at his level use Twitter to broadcast. Murdoch seems to get that it needs to be interactive to succeed. (He has nearly 265,000 followers now, up from nearly 240,000 when I checked last Thursday.)

It’s a year ago this week that the phone hacking scandal blew up, taking with it the News of the World, News Corp.’s chance to buy BSkyB and, it looked for a time, possibly the Murdochs. It still is far from resolved no matter how often he says it is, particularly with a number of his former execs under arrest and potential investigations in the U.S. It has dented his and the family’s power, to be sure, and helped lead to the break-up of the company he built over some 60 years, but Murdoch survives.

He’ll survive Scientology, too.

Nielsen reports that NYTimes.com, consistently the highest-ranking newspaper site and still far ahead of #2 WSJ.com, dropped year-over-year to 16.5 million monthly uniques in April 2009. But NYT spokeswoman Diane McNulty told E&P the numbers don’t track with three independent sources or with internal numbers: “We believe their data is in error.” She added that the paper is checking the methodology.

Meanwhile, WSJ.com isn’t likely to complain too loud: buoyed by a redesign and a major boost in multimedia, the Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) site posted a 160 percent gain to 12.4 million. The news prompted an internal memo (via Beet.TV) by editors Alan Murray and Almar Latour, talking about the “significant milestone” but mentioning the Nielsen issues. They’re take: “The Nielsen numbers have their problems. Our internal metrics suggest an much larger audience. Yet the base is consistent, so the trends are real.” Either way, boy, are they going to hate next year’s comps.

– Web-only results: SeattlePI.com was back in the top 30 after a stay at #32 but Nielsen claimed a drop in uniques for the second month since the Hearst news outlet went web-only. Nielsen said the site dropped 23 percent in March to 1.4 million; the print edition ceased March 17. In April, according to the service, the site dropped 17 percent year-over-year to 1.4 million. The site disputes both reports, saying its internal numbers showed 4.3 million uniques in April for a slight 1 percent gain year-over-year and 4.5 million in March, up nearly 10 percent. Sequentially, Hearst’s own numbers show a decrease from month to month.

– Mileage may vary: It’s not unusual for internal metrics and independent metrics to vary but often the difference is one of sheer numbers, not an up or down trajectory. It’s also not unusual for media outlets — or other sites that rely on traffic for advertising rates — to find fault with the indies. Late last week, executives at video joint venture Hulu raised issues about the Nielsen VideoCensus report that it lost unique visitors in April, dropping from 9.5 million in February to 8.9 million in March and 7.4 million in April.

E&P has the full chart.

– Diverse assets: There’s content synergies with all of Time Warner’s various businesses. As for distribution, there are clear advantages to holding onto the distribution channel. “Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) is the best customer of the cable channels.” Still, “every option is on the table.”

– AOL: “Think about if you owned it — and we do — it is a good business.” You’ve got two businesses: the old subscriber membership business, but that’s not the main business of AOL (NYSE: AOL). The real business is the advertising-and-eyeball-driven business, which is growing rapidly — 40 percent up until the last couple of quarters. “We are … ahead of everybody in handling other people’s third-party display advertising.”

– Publishing: “We’re not calling them magazines… they are journalistic content output.” They’re not just print operations, but online as well. There’s no difference between People and E!, since People can deliver the same videos of celebrities walking the red carpet at the Golden Globes.

– Stock price: Question from Murray: “Are you going to make it go up?” Answer: “Yes.” As for why it’s not already higher, Bewkes insisted it’s because “people don’t know” — a common sentiment among executives. Later on, Bewkes was asked if there were one thing he could tell the audience. “Buy the stock,” he joked.

– Digital: “There’s a lot of digital elements in what everyone’s doing.” Even HBO is a digital operation. It’s wrong to think that the advent of digital, which is good for the world’s seven billion people, is bad for revenue. You have an opportunity to deliver targeted, performance based products. “We’re all thinking about margin per unit, but that’s not the right way to look at it, because there’s no cost… There’s no cost to adding another million users.” In the future, it may make sense to earn a dollar per viewer, if there are a billion people consuming it.

– Time Warner in 10 years: Echoing his comments in the earnings call this morning, Bewkes replied: “I don’t want to tell anyone.” The company would rather quietly sneak up on the competition.

– Best move of his career: Greenlighting the Sopranos. “Making AOL go free was a big decision”. No question at all it was the right decision.

– Writer’s strike: “We don’t think it has any material adverse effect this year.” Hopes it will be resolved before next year, so problems can be avoided. This seems to be the prevailing attitude among media executives, although there’s less than two months left this year.

At the speakers dinner, we had a vigorous discussion about the future of business journalism, with panelists being Alan Murray, Wall Street Journal, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times, (NYSE: NYT) and David Lieberman, of USA Today, with Staci and I moderating, talking about how their jobs have changed in the last two years, the still-prevalent fear of linking out to other sources, the current business journalism scenario, and others. We have a video recording of the session we’ll have available in the next couple of weeks. Thanks, Reuters, for being a generous host.

Tomorrow is a busy day, and starts very early…we’re over and out for tonight.