If there was ever an example to illustrate the point it was News Corp Australia's reaction to the leak of its 2012-13 line by line weekly accounts to the website, Crikey.

Until now the performance of the News Ltd newspapers in Australia has been largely opaque because the company chooses to report its results across the globe without breaking them down by country.

But the Blue Book, as it is known inside News, revealed for the first time that News Corp's Australian publications are far from immune to the digital disruption that has coursed through the media industry overseas and in Australia.

News' The Australian newspaper revenue fell 14 per cent to $1.9 billion in 2012-13. Circulation revenue dropped 5 per cent and advertising revenue fell 18 per cent while operating income fell 67 per cent to $94 million.

News's response to the turbulent market has been to adopt what some call "the last man standing strategy". In the United States, many large cities such as Denver, Seattle and Tuscon have become one newspaper cities as a result of the shrinking print advertising market.

In the US some markets have seen their revenues shrink to one 10th the size of a decade earlier, with revenues from digital sites failing to fill the gap.

In Australia, to be fair, Fairfax's financial results have been ugly over the last two years. The leaked accounts show an equally miserable picture for News. Compared to Fairfax, the performance is probably worse.

Melbourne's Herald Sun was News' main earner but suffered significant falls in revenue and profitability. The weekday paper generated revenues of $250 million in 2012-13, down 13.5 per cent on the year before, and operating income of $35 million, down 41 per cent.  Sydney's Daily Telegraph experienced revenue drops of dropping 14 per cent to $160 million while operating income fell 65% to just $8 million.

But it was the results for The Australian that were the most ominous. The paper, which management admits has not been in the black since 2008, made a whopping $30 million loss in 2012-13.

So what was News' response this week?  It simultaneously called the information "out of date" and threatened injunctions against Crikey and all media companies which published it.

The Australian's Darren Davidson blamed departed CEO, Kim Williams.

"ONE year has passed since former News Corp Australia chief executive Kim Williams left the company, and there are just four days to go before his eagerly-awaited book is serialised in Fairfax Media newspapers. Yet the biggest news in media circles is a leaked document in which the damage wrought by his strategy in the last year of his short reign is laid bare for all to see," wrote Darren Davidson, The Australian's business media editor.

He then went on to tweet that his editor-in-chief had confirmed The Australian's losses had been halved since 2012-13. That means they've been wound back to a loss of $15 million in 2013-14. Thank heavens for that.

Mr Williams described the News commentary as a "festival of vengeance". In The Sydney Morning Herald he wrote that "sadly at its core, it repeats a denialist attitude to major behavioural and consumption change for news and information in all media".

From a media company, News' quick resort to injunctions to stifle dissemination of the information and debate surprised many.

News warned it would take "appropriate action" against any person or publication publishing stories using the contents of the leaked internal documents.

"The disclosure of this document is entirely unauthorised, and News is taking the necessary and appropriate action against Crikey (including considering all available legal avenues)" News warned.

For media companies, leaks are an important part of journalism. Sure, press releases form the basis of many stories but publishing information people don't want out there, provided there is a public interest is core business. News itself has a proud record in this regard.

The Herald Sun competed vigorously with its rivals for scoops on the ASADA investigation into banned supplements at Essendon. News heavily backed journalist Cameron Stewart, who in 2009 was heavily criticised for publishing details of a terrorism raid ahead of it occurring. Perhaps most contentiously, News chose to publish an internal ABC document last year, detailing the salaries of the ABC's top earners.  It sparked a debate over whether such information was fair game, given the public funding of the ABC, or whether it amounted to a serious breach of the privacy of individual presenters.