During a bleak period for the Los Angeles Times in 2006 under Tribune Co., editors quietly courted billionaire media mogul David Geffen to buy the newspaper, hoping that, in the spirit of civic-minded duty, he would run the Times as a public trust and protect its editorial integrity.
Almost 20 years later, the longstanding dream of billionaire White Knights swooping in to rescue journalism appears to gradually be turning into a nightmare, with some of those moguls revealing themselves, as fantasy characters go, to be something closer to Lex Luthor than the saviors that were envisioned.
Instead of the enlightened ownership for which journalists had hoped, the fear now is these corporate titans view newspapers as just another asset to help fuel their larger business objectives.