Broad is rumored to be among the bidders approaching Karsh and the board to discuss buying the L.A. Times. Tribune Co.'s board of directors, laden with major entertainment and finance industry players, convened for the first time in January.
This week, news broke on CNBC that the papers would be auctioned off in a process overseen by bankers Evercore and JPMorgan. A more accurate description is that the two firms have been hired to explore which suitors are legit — and willing to pay the magic number.
ILLUSTRATION BY FRED HARPER
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Possible Dream Team buyer Austin Beutner: "There is no voice to rival the L.A. Times."
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Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman, in an email, said, "There is a lot of interest in our newspapers, which we haven't solicited. Hiring outside financial advisers will help us determine whether that interest is credible, allow us to consider all of our options, and fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and employees."
Media consultant Alan Mutter says of Karsh and Tribune's board, "Those guys don't care if it's a newspaper or a taco stand. Right now, they're testing the market to see who's out there and how much they're willing to pay. If they find the right buyer, it's gone."
Rows of telephones and lime-green ergonomic chairs sit idle in Austin Beutner's West L.A. office, which was supposed to be campaign HQ for his 2013 L.A. mayoral run. These days, Beutner, the investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street before becoming Antonio Villaraigosa's top deputy mayor, is essentially unemployed.
"My day right now is ... ," he says, his voice between a mumble and a whisper. "You ever been to one of those English hotels where they have tea at 4 o'clock in the afternoon? Probably not. So you travel there, and they have these little sandwiches, tea sandwiches. They take a regular old sandwich and cut it into 15 pieces. That's my day, as a metaphor."
The 52-year-old Beutner is looking for a bigger sandwich. He raised more than $600,000 to run for mayor in 2013, but most residents had no idea who he was, and his wonky if credible campaign ideas made little news. He dropped out in May.
Beutner now is putting together a group of wealthy Angelenos to make an offer on the L.A. Times and operate it as a nonprofit.
"There is no voice to rival the L.A. Times," Beutner says. "I'd love to see it restored to its prior stature in terms of it being a voice of civic consciousness. And I think the best ownership for that voice is local."
Local is everything to Beutner: local ownership, more local-news coverage. He says he would bulk up coverage of L.A. and Southern California but trim back some foreign and national political coverage in locales where a dozen or more news outlets often cover the same story.
If his group bought the Times, he'd consider using more stories from pool reporters and wire services. As an example, he cited a reporter stationed in Afghanistan for three years at great cost to the Times. "Afghanistan is not unimportant," he says. "But you can't do everything. You can't be everywhere in the first person."
Editor-in-chief Davan Maharaj takes exception to this example of costly foreign coverage, saying: "Afghanistan is a straight case where foreign is local. ... People here are very interested in those wars, because they give their sons and daughters [to them]."
Similar to when rich locals began banding together to bid on Frank McCourt's Los Angeles Dodgers, Beutner won't say who is in his group. Rumors seem to suggest that Broad and former Mayor Richard Riordan are involved, and possibly even mega-billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong.
"I think we have the resources to pay an appropriate amount," Beutner says. "I'm not being coy; we haven't seen the books and records yet. ... We'd definitely be prepared to move quickly." It probably can't hurt that Beutner in 1996 co-founded Evercore — the very investment bank hired by Tribune this week to vet prospective buyers.
Though Beutner steadfastly refuses to say who "we" is, Soon-Shiong makes a certain amount of sense as one of the deep pockets. The richest man in Los Angeles and a brilliant doctor and inventor, he is co-inventor of more than 50 patents, including one for a drug called Abraxane, which uses nanoparticle technology to fight breast cancer. He has a daughter, Nika, who interned at the L.A. Times last summer.
Soon-Shiong declined to comment, but clearly he wants to own something civic — and big — in L.A. He bought the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard and a minority share of the Lakers, and teamed up with hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen to convince McCourt to sell him the Dodgers, although that didn't work out. Now, he's reportedly interested in buying AEG, owner of Staples Center.
For many Times journalists, past and present, Beutner's team represents the Dream Team, just as many Angelenos hoped developer Rick Caruso and former Yankees/Dodgers manager Joe Torre would buy the Dodgers.
But even an earnest-sounding nonprofit would have to halt the Times' decline in revenue. "If you look at the bankruptcy documents, they show continuing, rather precipitous declines," says Beutner, who was deputy mayor for 15 months at an annual salary of $1.
