Is David Geffen making a third try for the Los Angeles Times? Nikki Finke’s gossips say yes, though Geffen has been yachting in the South Pacific for a few weeks, and it’s possible he never had those super secret talks with Sam Zell that have been reported. [DHD]

• WaPo disses GQ’s Blackberry “exclusive” with Lindsay Lohan. “Because that’s how the kids are communicating these days.” More like, because they couldn’t get an actual sit-down. (Snap!)

• Fox hopes an annoying cartoon taxi driver will keep viewers from channel-surfing during the commercial break.

• David Geffen vying for joint control of Los Angeles Times. Geffen’s offers include inordinate sums of money and a standing offer to “do Zell’s laundry for a month.”

• Unamused by those (hilarious!) adulteress jokes, Rudy Giuliani asks the mainstream media to leave his wife alone.

• Film critic Roger Ebert eager to beat cancer, return to work; gives his chances of a full-recovery “two thumbs up.”

• And, in sad news, a bunch of crappy tv shows you’ve never seen have just been officially canceled.

NPR media beater and Slate bubble burster (when Jack Shafer has the day off) Kim Masters gave us more of what we love yesterday afternoon: shattered dreams. While everyone – everyone! even reporters who work there – think David Geffen’s ownership of Tribune’s Los Angeles Times would be the best case scenario, Masters has news for y’all: Working for the Gef would, like, totally suck balls. Now watch as Kim trafficks in a little gossip and hearsay to reach her conclusion:

Is life under the Tribune Co. so nightmarish that Geffen seems like a dream? Both of them should know what Geffen can be like.

I’ve heard from multiple sources in L.A., including an editor at the Times, that Geffen told a Timesman that were he to succeed in buying the paper, his first order of business would be firing a reporter in the business section who had crossed him. If Geffen has that on his to-do list—much less at the top—he is the wrong man at the wrong Times. […]

Geffen is famously vindictive. One reporter now at the Times once called me in tears after an encounter with him on the phone (one truly has to be on the receiving end of his verbal savagery to appreciate it). And does anyone think he’ll tolerate articles that annoy him or his friends? And he has lots of friends—from Hollywood to Washington, from Steven Spielberg to Hillary Clinton.

But you know who Geffen isn’t friends with? The Tribune Co. And Rupert Murdoch. And Dick Cheney. So at least when there’s an article to do about Murdoch trying to buy out a Tribune property that Cheney might casually patron, you’ll have full confidence it’ll be an unbiased report. And then the world will be good again.

Could the LAT be extending out a friendly hand to potential buyer David Geffen? That’s what moonlighting NYT blogger David Carr suspects. There are just too many flattering articles about Dreamgirls – Geffen’s “pet project” – for the LAT to merely be towing the line of every other media outlet in fawning over the blockbuster project.

Still, the LAT and its Oscar website, The Envelope, has dived deeper into the tank and more often than almost any media outlet. The Bagger is no cynic — he actually enjoyed “We are Marshall” — but he has watched story after story emerge from his esteemed West Coast competitor and wondered if someone, certainly not him, would begin to think thusly:

“Dreamgirls,” is the long-beloved project of David Geffen, the Los Angeles macher who owned the film rights to the story and who has been rumored to be in talks with the Chandler family about teaming up on a bid for the LAT.

No one knows what, if anything, Mr. Geffen is going to do, but if you worked at the paper, might not the possibility that you would soon be calling him boss or He Who Must Be Obeyed have an impact on the amount of attention “Dreamgirls” gets?

While we were quick to notice former New York Post-cum-Fortune scribe Tim Arango’s CNBC flattery when he thought he could land a gig on the biz channel, we’re going out on a limb and remaining cautious about whether LAT writers even have the foresight or dot connecting ability to play into Geffen’s back pocket. But when Lola Ogunnaike started feting ABC any chance she got as she auditioned for The View? Yeah, that was totally her M.O.

The “G” in Dreamworks SKG is making an all out bid for the Los Angeles Times. Taking a good chunk of his $4.6 billion fortune, David Geffen has pitched the Tribune Co.-owned paper with a $2 billion all-cash buyout bid. But the media conglom has said no, at least for now, as it awaits suitors for the entire company.

Several observers said the paucity of interest in Tribune had increased the chance that the company would be forced to consider selling individual assets, which include the Los Angeles newspaper, KTLA-TV Channel 5, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Cubs and 22 other television stations.

And if these deal falls through, for a cool $4 million Geffen could likely pick up Jason Binn’s Los Angeles Confidential — which, let’s be honest here, carries about the same social cachet as the LAT.

Can a Hollywood producer own the Los Angeles Times? A real estate mogul can own the New York Observer. A child molester once partially owned Radar. So, why not? Rich people more or less get what they want, especially when it comes to media, right?

We like to take the attention off the small time PR people and random porno filming assistants once in awhile to focus on the actual larger issues in media these days. And DreamWorks SKG founder, David Geffen (the G in SKG) reportedly wanting to buy the L.A. Times is a bigger-ish deal.

Especially when it’s being reported that, when the current editor of the L.A. Times, Dean Baquet got wind of that news last year, he was stunned.

“How’s he going to feel the first time we review a movie or music produced by a friend of his?” Baquet asked.

Or God forbid praising and/or not attempting to destroy a rival. And n “insider” tells Nikki Finke that Geffen is “very serious” and “pretty confident” in regards to getting his hands on the paper. Not that Baquet is off Finke’s hook, either, though. She hears that the EIC has been hand-picking staffers who will “drum up local support” for a “local buyer” (aka, “golfing buddy”) who would snap up the paper. It seems to be a pretty classic “boys club” case.

But the Times’ most pressing problem isn’t whether Geffen or someone else buys it, or Tribune sells it, or Baquet gets fired. Instead, the widespread media coverage has ignored the dangerous game being played with the paper’s integrity between this billionaire boys’ club and Baquet or his surrogates behind closed doors.

Oh, wait. Why are we getting in such a tizz? This is L.A.! We should be expecting as much. They can just sell the paper to Rick Hilton or Donald Trump and Paris and Ivanka can run the editorial section. Except for the part where Joel Stein murders the entire staff, we think that plan is flawless.

Baquet’s Billionaire Boys’ Club [Nikki Finke, LA Weekly]

• More people want to blow up Omaha, Nebraska than New York City? Yeah, we can buy that. [NYSun]

• Finally! Now we have a place to keep our mace during those midnight jogs through Central Park. [NYM]

• It’s guys like David Geffen that make it impossible to live in Manhattan anymore. [NYO]

• We hope somebody sent this New York Post article to Peter Braunstein. He’s been out of the sex fiend loop for a while. [NYP]

• Alright, guys. What the fuck? Who let those cab driver people talk to those MTA people? [Metro]

• Ted Koppel is finally on the way out at Nightline, with ABC News brass looking to replace him with either Cynthia McFadden, Terry Moran and (holy shit) Michael Jackson’s favorite interviewer Martin Bashir.

• At the 26th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, onlookers were treated to CNN interviewing their very own Christiane Amanpour about – what else? – reporting!

• Entertainment mogul David Geffen is truly serious about buying the Los Angeles Times, but maybe he’s looking more toward spin control than a new playing. After all, the LAT did hound him on DreamWorks SKG’s being a flop and his refusal to allow public access next to his Malibu pad.

• Tom Wolfe doesn’t need the name of his book I Am Charlotte Simmons to actually be on the book to sell copies. Just his name – in big-ass, bold letters – will do.

• Google is facing its latest lawsuit from book writers, who claim the search giant’s plans to scan and create a database of entire libraries amounted to “massive copyright infringement,” while the Mountain View firm says its plans to wrap the books’ contests in ads constitutes “fair use.”

• At yesterday’s memorial service, Peter Jennings was remembered as a “devoted father, hard-driving journalist and a man who befriended homeless people,” but there was no mention he practically was a definitive version of How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.

• If you were lucky enough to give the Wall Street Journal your business rather than home address, you might’ve been lucky enough to miss their new Weekend Edition.

• In Touch falls victim to its own publishing schedule (and failing to make the proper phone calls), publishing a very out-dated two-pager on Renée Zellweger gushing over her “partner, my soul mate,” otherwise known as her soon-to-be ex-husband Kenny Chesney.

• David Geffen has already tackled the music and film industries, so why not print? Rumors abound that the mega millionaire is eyeing the Los Angeles Times for a new plaything.

• Embroiled Us Weekly “Hot Stuff” editor Tim McDarrah is out on $50,000 bail, awaiting his Oct. 14 preliminary hearing on charges he tried to bang a 13-year-old girl. It needn’t be said, but he’s grounded from using the computer and interacting with minor children.

• Judith Miller’s got 99 problems, and a bitch ain’t one. Her 11 weeks at the Alexandria Detention Center have seen nearly 100 guests come and go, and we don’t think any of them were bloggers!

• If the Wall Street Journal would put its frickin’ content online, it’d be much easier for people like us to tell you how much it sucked.

• Meanwhile, the New York Times is taking some of its online offerings behind a wall of its own with today’s debut of TimesSelect. Now if only they would let us register for a free trial without a credit card we could tell you how much it sucked.

• As Details‘ publisher Chris Mitchell leaves to pursue a career in stuff we plant our asses in, Vanity Fair associate publisher Paul Jowdy is moving in to the envious position of Dan Peres‘ masthead mate.