News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch has been discussing a deal to swap his MySpace social-networking site with Yahoo for a one-quarter stake in the Internet-portal company, even as he pursues his $5 billion offer for Dow Jones, the Washington Post reports.

The talks with Yahoo are preliminary and began before chief executive Terry S. Semel resigned Monday, said a source familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion is ongoing. It is unclear whether the talks will move forward under Semel’s successor, Jerry Yang.

Yahoo declined to comment. The talks were reported in today’s Times of London, which is owned by News Corp.

MySpace is the Internet’s most popular social-networking site, claiming more than 100 million users. Yahoo has been trying to break into social networking and made a run at Facebook last year, without success.

Murdoch bought MySpace and a group of other online properties in summer 2005 for $650 million. Yahoo was valued at about $37 billion yesterday.

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