Is there a NYT-Bloomberg merger in the future?

That's the "pure conjecture'' offered by Wall Street Journal outgoing Managing Editor Paul Steiger in a Page One story tracing how newspapers got in the jam they're in -- and how they might get out. Steiger mentions the entrepreneurs who've just taken over two big media companies -- Rupert Murdoch at WSJ parent Dow Jones & Co., and Sam Zell at Tribune Co. Then Steiger wonders whether another entrepreneur might come to the rescue of the New York Times Co.

"Assuming that New York Mayor and Bloomberg LP owner Mike Bloomberg isn't U.S. president-elect a year from now," Steiger wrote yesterday, "would he and Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. consider putting their two enterprises together?"

That would leave only Gannett among major newspaper publishers without a publicly stated exit strategy for its unhappy shareholders. Of course, that begs the question: Who would Gannett turn to? Steiger doesn't address that question; indeed, his story never mentions GCI once.

[Image: this morning's Times, Newseum]