On the heels of Paul Tharp's obituary in yesterday's New York Post of the Sulzberger family fortune comes the report that Hollywood moguleh David Geffen has been eyeing the carcass of the New York Times.

Tharp was stark — "the family that controls the New York Times empire has lost more than 86 percent of its fortune and may have sell their controlling stake to get out of debt." Geffen? He's just rich.

Fortune's Richard Siklos followed up Tharp's report of the Sulzbergers' lack thereof by revealing yesterday afternoon that Geffen offered last month to buy the hedge fund Harbinger's 19 percent stake in the Times Co.

This morning, the Times's Andrew Ross Sorkin blogged about the reports of Geffen's offer. The Times piece added the important information that the Times is "one of the most venerated names in world journalism." No offense, Sorkin, but that means nothing to Phil Falcone's people over at Harbinger, which, according to Sorkin's own estimate, paid $500 million for its chunk of the Times and has seen the value of that lump of coal drop to $194 million.

On the other hand, such numbers wouldn't exactly scare Falcone. Known as "The Midas of Misery," he makes huge money by betting that companies will fail.

The Times is so burdened by mismanaged debt that it's had to reach out to shady Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim for money. The vultures shouldn't be circling such a fine collection of journalists, but it wasn't the journalists who made the bad business decisions, it was the Sulzbergers.

If the family hangs on to control of the paper, it could get cheap enough that, if Brooklyn boy Geffen doesn't want it, I could buy the fucking thing.