According to Reuters, the contract between AllThingsD and News Corp is up at the end of the year and relations between the two entities are “amicable but stressed.”

A spokesperson for News Corp said by email on Friday afternoon the company declines comment.

The sale of AllThingsD would have implications not just for the media industry, where tech blogs are a popular property, but for the technology scene as a whole. Companies in the sector frequently drop important leaks to figures like Mossberg and Swisher whose pronouncements on companies like Yahoo and Apple ripple widely.

Sources told Reuters that Conde Nast, Hearst and Yahoo are among possible suitors for All Things D. AOL came up as a more remote possibility.

AllThingsD is supported by advertising but also by events like the “Dive into Media” hosted in Southern California this week that attracted a gaggle of tech bigwigs from companies like Dish and Google.

AllThingsD is an autonomous unit within News Corp but the corporation owns the website and the name. This would, in theory, limit Mossberg and Swisher’s control in the outcome of the sale talks; however, Reuters reports that their contracts give them approval authority over a sale.

In recent years, star journalists have increasing leverage over the publications with which they work, in part due to portable social media followings. This year, for instance, popular blogger Andrew Sullivan left the Daily Beast to start his own website where he’s asking readers to voluntarily donate $19.99 a year to read him.

To see Andrew Sullivan and learn about the latest shifts in the media industry come join us at paidContent Live this April in New York.

Speaking at the Dive into Media conference on Tuesday, the 29-year-old Hughes spoke about the state of the magazine but offered no clear answers to questions about its future profitability.

According to Hughes, the New Republic has 44,000 subscribers, which is up from the 34,000 when he bought it. Despite the small number, he said “for the moment, we make money in print” but acknowledged the operation is not making money overall.

“I think we can be profitable, not this year, probably not next year, but there’s a route to it,” said Hughes.

Hughes and fellow panelist Larry Kramer, president and publisher of USA Today, also praised traditional news brands as curators and a source of conversation.

In short, Hughes didn’t appear to have any solid answers about how he will make money from the New Republic — but for now he doesn’t seem to care and appears happy to embrace what host Kara Swisher described as his “do-gooder” and “Lincoln-y”mission.

Hughes did address the role of social media for publishers, saying it brings in 25 percent of website traffic. He also noted that his former employer is not especially helpful for spreading stories.

“Facebook has an interesting challenge when it comes to newsfeed products. They tend to reward images rather than links and the sort of journalism we do. It means we spend more time about Twitter.”

(Want to learn more about monetization strategies for content? Come join us at the paidContent Live conference in New York on April 17).

This story was updated on Wednesday to reflect that the New Republic’s subscriber numbers are 44,000 not 45,000 and that the publication had 34,000 not 38,000 before Hughes purchased it.

A New York Times executive mentioned the move on the earnings call Thursday. On the call, Chief Financial Officer Jame Follo said advertisers were enthusiastic about the idea of making both the tech and health blogs more attractive to a business-to-business audience. In the case of Bits, launched last November, the company is aiming to challenge the preeminence of the Wall Street Journal’s ‘All Things D‘ among technophiles.

The call followed the release of earnings this morning that showed ongoing declines in NYT Co.’s overall revenues and profits.

On the call, Follo also pointed to a series of features designed to entice users to pay for digital content. These include one-click subscriptions in iTunes, free Kindle and Nook access for subscribers, and group accounts for corporate and educational users.

In response to analysts’ questions about the company’s announced 20% quarterly increase in digital subscribers, Follo said the total number of 390,000 included figures for online readers of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. About 57,000 of the subscribers came via e-readers (this figure doesn’t account for new holiday subscribers).

The new Boston Globe site, which was launched in October, has 16,000 subscribers while the IHT has about 10,000.

Follo added that while many new subscribers were offered a 99 cent introductory rate for the first month, the “conversion rate is very strong.”

The company also enjoyed its first increase in home delivery in five years. In 2012, it raised subscriber prices by 4% and newsstand prices by 50 cents.

Despite its growing online subscriber base, the NYT Co still faces significant strategic challenges as print advertising declined 7.9% from the same quarter a year ago. Analysts also expressed concern about the dismal showing of the company’s About.com unit where digital revenues fell by 25% and overall profit by 67%. Executives said the decline was due to a fall-off in prices and click-through rates and by About.com’s content being downgraded in Google’s search algorithm.

Chairman and chief executive officer Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., said the company is still in the early stages of a search to replace former CEO Janet Robinson who was fired in December.