David Geffen's Changes For LA Times...

My new column, Deal Or No Deal, compares what's happening with Eli Broad, Ron Burkle and David Geffen and the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Co. to NBC's hit game show and asks the question: Broad, Burkle, Geffen... when it comes to the Times, whose briefcase is bigger?

(Thursday's New York Times also looks at Geffen's interest in buying the paper. But the story has nothing new in it.) In my view, more and more, the newspaper on Spring Street is beginning to resemble Deal or No Deal. Forget all those ink-stained news males: bring on the female eye candy. Or better yet, the really rich guys.

Hollywood mogul David Geffen is still an enthusiastic contestant to buy the Los Angeles Times; in fact, he’s so eager he’s already planning what he’ll do once he owns it (more on that below). Like any great game show, though, the stakes just got raised. Today, two other Los Angeles billionaires, investor tycoon Eli Broad and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, have opened their briefcases. Only this time, fueled either by local pride or a lower-than-expected sale price, Broad and Burkle jointly submitted a bid to acquire the Times’ big-media, loser parent Tribune Co. In terms of fortunes, Eli Broad's is valued at $5.6 billion; Ron Burkle's at $2.5 billion, David Geffen's at $4.6 billion. Broad and Burkle could outgame Geffen by buying the entire parent company first, whereas David only wanted the paper and not the other assets. Then, again, no one outgames Geffen. Everyone in Hollywood knows that.

I’ve been reporting for months how Geffen’s pursuit of the Tribune Co.’s most troubled outpost not only hasn’t flagged, it has fired up, and not just because the paper’s 20 percent profit margin is so much better than the 6 percent earned by his bonds. Now I’m told Geffen is starting to plan what he intends to do at the paper once it’s his. Here’s what he’s saying to friends: He’ll pour money into more hires. He plans to staff -- more like stuff -- the paper with name writers and journalism stars. (Of course, he’ll raid The New York Times, where Frank Rich and his wife, Alex Witchel, are his good friends and occasional overnight guests. So are Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi. So are a lot of literati.) He’ll demand quality. He’ll ratchet up the Web site (even though he hates how prohibitively expensive it is to do that).

He’ll figure out a way to bring in Latinos as readers. Geffen loathes how boring, badly written, inconsequential and pedestrian the L.A. Times’ editorial and opinion section is. He thinks nobody reads it. He knows nobody talks about it. Most of all, he wants his newspaper to be talked about. He’ll put the newsroom ahead of the ludicrous profit margins demanded by Wall Street and the Tribune Co. That’s not to say he wants to lose money, just that he thinks it’s a good investment already (though not if its stock price keeps dropping). What not to expect from Geffen is that he’ll devote every waking minute of his life to the venture. But, at 63, he’s looking for a new challenge. The movie biz, well, that hasn’t excited him for years. His Oscar-touted pic Dreamgirls could be his last showbiz hurrah. (And some scenes from it were, ironically, filmed inside the LA Times building.) Besides, look at the lengths he’s going to make the paper his. First, there are all those recent art sales he’s making. True, he’s timed it to the top of the art market, but the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s getting could be going into his war chest to buy the LA Times. Even if Burkle and Broad beat him to the first bid, Geffen is well positioned to get what he wants. Consider his friendship with Tribune investor John W. Rogers Jr., the Ariel Capital Management chairman and CEO, as well as with Rogers’ protégée and powerhouse Ariel president Mellody Hobson, who sits on the board of DreamWorks Animation. (When Hobson visits L.A., she often stays at Geffen’s mansions.) Geffen was also one of those bold-faced names who met with LA Times managing editor Leo Wolinsky about a possible purchase of the paper. As I reported back in September, Wolinsky, acting as editor Dean Baquet's surrogate, was playing a dangerous game with the paper’s integrity by having secret talks with the "billionaire boys' club" to drum up local support for a local buyer of the LA Times. But Wolinsky himself refused to confirm or deny or even discuss the meetings with me. I found it bizarre that both Wolinsky and Baquet were so blind to the obvious need for transparency here. So, now, Geffen, Broad, Burkle... Deal or No Deal?

One of the quickest ways to go broke is to go into the publishing business, particularly a daily newspaper. Geffen wants to put out the type of product that he would like to read: something even more arcane and elitist than the paper Los Angeles readers are increasingly rejecting. If the LA Times had a future, serious people like Rupert Murdoch, who has forgotten more than Geffen will ever know about that business, would be biding for it.

2 posted on 11/08/2006 11:10:39 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee (Anything a politician gives you he has first stolen from you)

I think you've made some fairly decent points there. I wouldn't mind seeing Geffin burn some of his cash on Pravda on the Pacific though.

3 posted on 11/08/2006 11:36:03 PM PST by DoughtyOne (Victory will never be achieved while defining Conservatism downward, and forsaking it's heritage.)

He seems so obsessed it is likely he will acquire the Times. I grew up in the daily newspaper business and I have seen no end to brilliant, well-meaning, monied amateurs lose everything trying to publish a paper. The New York Post--the tacky antithesis to the kind of high art Geffen wants to print--was the only large metro paper to gain circulation in last month's Audit Bureau of Circulation figures.

4 posted on 11/08/2006 11:50:14 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee (Anything a politician gives you he has first stolen from you)

Thanks for the additional comments. I appreciate it.

5 posted on 11/08/2006 11:57:40 PM PST by DoughtyOne (Victory will never be achieved while defining Conservatism downward, and forsaking it's heritage.)

thought i read that none of the offers for the Times including Geffen's wasn't high enough.

Geffen just wants The Times, while Burkle and Broad are trying to get all of Tribune, then sell off the assets at higher prices individually

I saw a quote from him the other day saying the LA Times was not liberal enough. Enough said.

I want to see one of these billionaires buy it and lose a ton of $$$

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