Rupert Murdoch may rule the media world but he's still beholden to the innovative upstarts for coming up with the good ideas. Will Sturgeon reports on how new and old media are learning to co-exist.

Rupert Murdoch is the Agenda Setter that time and tide simply cannot displace.

He is the only person to have featured in every single silicon.com Agenda Setters top 50 list and during the past seven years he has not dipped lower than 25th, finishing four times in the top 10.

Others have come close: Bill Gates misses out for the first time this year; Tim Berners-Lee was absent in 2004; Jeff Bezos missed in 2004; and Steve Jobs took a year off in 2001. But Murdoch now stands alone as the uber-Agenda Setter.

Furthermore Murdoch's achievement flies in the face of suggestions over the past few years that the ageing Aussie tycoon had missed the boat where the internet and technology were concerned - and quashes talk of 'citizen journalism', 'web 2.0' or the now-dated term 'new media' overthrowing Murdoch.

Murdoch's number 4 ranking on this year's list is largely due to his recent realisation of the need to reposition his business - to embrace the online world and trends such as social networking. So what did he do? Whip out his chequebook, and $580m later he was the proud owner of MySpace.

Still the new order is only growing stronger and though the media upstarts may not overthrow Murdoch, they are setting the agenda of what he is paying attention to.

This year the likes of OhMyNews and YouTube signify a new assault on the media, broadcast and entertainment industries in which Murdoch enjoys such clout.

The YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen made an impressive number 9 debut - just five spots below Murdoch - for popularising user-generated content on their video-sharing site. Already broadcasters are realising that instead of protesting copyrighted materials being posted on the site, they must find a way to work with YouTube.

OhMyNews.com founder Oh Yeon-Ho shot onto the list at the respectable number 16 spot for pioneering citizen journalism in Korea and beyond. His work has stirred up media circles and left them asking 'what is a journalist?'.

Similarly, the likes of Digg (founder Kevin Rose is in at number 49) and the continued growth of RSS (Dave Winer, number 20) show that sales at the newsstand may be one area where Murdoch does have to concede defeat. In the long term, newspapers simply cannot compete with the internet. They will linger and many may yet outlive us all but Murdoch knows the tide has turned irrevocably.

Digg allows its vast community of readers to recommend stories to other readers - who vote and therefore democratically establish their own top stories in each section. It's a rapidly growing news aggregator which takes the success and popularity of similar sites such as Slashdot.org to new heights and a mainstream audience. With RSS also growing in popularity the way audiences consume news is changing dramatically.

But Murdoch's MySpace purchase signals his intention to make up lost revenues elsewhere and go toe-to-toe with any young upstart start-ups. The huge online community which MySpace has built up is an incredible opportunity for a man who owns so many content providers - from 20th Century Fox to The Sun.

What's more Murdoch owns one powerful tool which many an innovative young entrepreneur sorely lacks - cash, and lots of it. Acquisition could be Murdoch's greatest weapon and his easiest answer regarding how he stays relevant in industries increasingly obsessed with the web.

The presence of the BBC's Ashley Highfield at number 8 on the list serves as a reminder that there is more than one very big fish dictating the way the broadcast and media world evolves in the internet age.

But perhaps a more interesting fight for the BBC won't be with Rupert Murdoch but rather with his son James, CEO of BSkyB (number 21).

Agenda Setters judge, Kate Bulkley said of James Murdoch: "He should be on the list for turning that company, which was basically a pay-TV company into a telecoms company and a broadband company and doing it in a very smart way. He's got all these big giants like BT and everyone lined up and he's probably going to slaughter them again."

Daddy will be so proud, if he's not too busy to notice.