Billionaires Battle for ‘LA Times’

California billionaire David Geffen has told friends that he would like to purchase The Los Angeles Times. But he’ll have to fight for it, as two rival billionaires, Eli Broad and Ron Burkle, have joined forces to make a bid for the nation’s fourth largest paper.

The two rivals, like Geffen, say that they want the paper not just for financial gain but to invest in “an imperiled civic institution,” writes The New York Times. Details of the bid were not disclosed.

The Los Angeles Times is under pressure from parent Tribune Co. to increase revenues. The company itself is, in turn, facing pressure from its largest shareholder to improve value or break up the company.

Other big city papers owned by large corporations are facing similar challenges. One possible solution that has been raised often in recent days is the purchase of these papers by local businessmen who have more than just a financial interest in seeing the papers do well. Former GE chairman John F. Welch Jr. has expressed interest in purchasing The Boston Globe, for example.

Some journalists believe that the purchase of a newspaper by a local businessman will put an end to the heavy cuts they have been forced to enact recently. But that may not be the case.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, was recently purchased by a group of local business executives and announced “possibly significant” job cuts due to an accelerated decline in advertising.
The Inquirer editor, Amanda Bennett, stepped down yesterday and was replaced by William K. Marimow, formerly a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter for The Inquirer and, more recently, a top news executive with NPR who was recently asked to take a lower position.