Human Rights Groups Decry Ugly Stereotype of Jews and Gays Running Media; In Other News, David Geffen to Buy Los Angeles Times

What to get the multimedia mogul who has everything? How about something quaint, old-fashioned, arguably obsolete?; I'm thinking Family Circus, I'm thinking fun, folded hats... I'm thinking the Los Angeles Times! The story, ironically enough, appeared in the Times' own weekend business section:

"Three well-known civic figures in Los Angeles said they had heard Geffen in recent weeks talking about how he would like to take control of The Times, owned by Tribune Co.

Geffen met with Tribune Chief Executive Dennis J. FitzSimons this summer to say he was interested in buying the paper.

"We had a meeting at his request, with no disclosed reason in advance," FitzSimons confirmed in a telephone interview. "At that point, he indicated his interest in the paper. And I told him it was not for sale.""

Way to hold the fort, FitzSimons! Never understimate the tenacity of someone who capitalizes a letter in the middle of their last name. The article then gets into the awkwardly murky territory of reporting the paper's own financial performance. It's akin to listening to your doctor talk to you about his own fight with cancer:

The national economy's slow recovery from recession has dragged down advertising sales at The Times, the biggest property in the Tribune empire. Total revenue at the Los Angeles paper peaked at $1.14 billion in 1999 at the height of the technology boom, but has since remained relatively flat, coming in at $1.07 billion last year, according to internal company documents...So why would Geffen, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine at $4.4 billion, want to plunge into an industry that is struggling to maintain its footing as many readers shift to cable television and the Internet?

They offer several plausible theories -- expanding his empire, improving coverage through local ownership instead of the current Chicago-based Tribune ownership -- but one ballsy theory, provided by an anonymous 'businessman', tends to linger:

The businessman who spoke to Geffen said the music and movie mogul also talked of another motivation: correcting what he sees as the unfairness that the newspaper's news and editorial pages have demonstrated toward him and others.

Among Times articles that might have annoyed the entertainment mogul were a July editorial that called DreamWorks a failure and columns by California section columnist Steve Lopez that chastised Geffen for failing to open a public access way next to his home on Carbon Beach in Malibu. (The path opened this spring after a protracted fight with the California Coastal Commission.)

The entire venture could come down to very basic economics: $3 billion to kill Doonesbury.