Mayor Mike Bloomberg may emerge as a white knight for the New York Times.
Bloomberg aides are reportedly encouraging him to consider merging financial-information giant Bloomberg LP with the Times, which is under pressure from dissident shareholders to revive ad sales and unload assets to boost its sagging share price.
Newsweek reports that the mayor’s confidants are actively pushing the idea after it was first floated in a Michael Wolff piece on the embattled paper that ran in the May issue of Vanity Fair.
“It’s the most logical idea in the newspaper business,” Wolff told The Post yesterday. “The New York Times is vulnerable, and Bloomberg is a potential buyer who has the money, the credibility, the interest and the chops.”
Some members of the Sulzberger family, which controls the Times, are concerned about the paper’s vulnerability after a wave of shareholder assaults and are looking for a protector to fend off further attacks, sources told the Post.
Newsweek, citing a member of the mayor’s inner circle, said merger proponents believe Bloomberg is in the best position to take the company private and “help protect the brand.”
A spokesman for the mayor referred questions to Bloomberg LP, which didn’t return a call for comment. A Times spokeswoman had not responded by press time.
Newsweek said the chatter about a Bloomberg-Times tie-up is growing louder as a redesigned Wall Street Journal, under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, prepares to do battle with the Times. Murdoch is chairman of News Corp., which also owns The Post.