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Billionaire Ron Burkle, who had shown an interest in buying the LA Times, has apparently hooked up with some of  the unionized employees at Dow Jones (DJ) to snatch the company away from Rupert Murdoch.

Burkle would be joining the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, which represents over 2,000 Dow Jones employees, in working on a bid. Dow Jones has a little over 7,000 staff.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the chairman of Dow Jones, M. Peter McPherson, has been pushing the company’s founding family and board to go slow in talks with Murdoch. That may give Burkle additional time.

Burkle and the union have a significant problem, unless the billionaire wants to buy the company with his own cash. Dow Jones has operating income of about $120 million a year. If Burkle wants to use the same mechanism that Sam Zell used with The Tribune Company, it would involve taking on almost the entire purchase price in debt.

Covering over $5 billion in borrowings along with debt service when operating income is so low may be very tough. Murdoch does not have the problem. News Corp (NWS) is large enough to digest Dow Jones without creating any debt issues.

If the employees of Dow Jones do not want to live under the tyranny of Murdoch, the should consider what it would be like to operate under a mountain of debt.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@247wallst.com. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

It is not enough that Yahoo! (YHOO) is selling advertising for newspapers and Google (GOOG) is brokering every media type under the sun. Now, Ebay (EBAY) is opening a radio advertising auction business.

The new network will have 2,300 stations and will work through Ebay’s Media Marketplace Web site.

Although it is fine for an auction company like Ebay to auction radio time and a advertising targeting business like the one Google has to auction TV time, it has to make Wall St wonder why the companies do not stick to their own businesses.

Radio and newspapers have been around much longer than the internet. Whatever troubles they have gotten themselves into will not be solved by electronic media purchasing systems. If anything, a more efficient systems will drive rates down. Not exactly what a business with revenue attrition needs.

Douglas A. McIntyre

For $2,457, a car buyer can get a used 1995 Ford Mustang with 153,000 miles on it, or a brand new car from Tata Motors, the India car maker. The car market in the country is growing at the rate of almost 12% a year, while markets like the US are flat to down.

Nissan already has a car its sells in India for under $10,000, but to get deeper into the potential market, the price of new cars will have to come down.

Cheap cars are a double-edged sword for big car companies. GM, VW, Honda, and Ford have made good progress selling cars in China and are moving into India quickly. GM’s sales in China grew to over 867,000 last year, up 31%. But, while a US car company can make $4,000 or more on a large SUV or pick-up, the profits on a low-priced car may be harder to come by because the costs of commodities like aluminum and plastic are a higher portion of overall costs. And, those expenses are rising, at least for now.

Not being in the ultra-inexpensive car market has risks as well. Companies including Tata and Chery in China would rather see their cars in the hands of the locals. And, Tata’s new low-priced cars are a sign that they mean to do what they can to expand their piece of the market.

The manufacturing and design of inexpensive fuel-efficient cars could have an unintended consequence for a company like GM. While it may get market share in China, it could be, with some modifications, an import to the US market if gas prices continue to rise.

GM importing cars from India and China to the US? That’s rich.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@247wallst.com. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.