Photo by Office of the Mayor of New York

A bit less than 18 months from now, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg will face a unique problem. He’ll be a 71-year-old former big-city executive sitting on a $22 billion fortune and, considering his commitment to fastidious living, there’s a good chance he could be kicking around for at least another decade.

Assuming Bloomberg doesn’t jerry-rig the system again and grab himself a fourth term as mayor, he’ll need to figure out what to with all that time and money.

Reuters’ Jack Shafer has an idea for how Bloomberg can make his legacy: Buy The Washington Post. In a long essay, Shafer argues that with the Post being a big money-loser for The Washington Post Company, Bloomberg could be the perfect buyer. That is, if Post CEO Donald Graham would be willing to sell. But everything else The Washington Post Company does makes money, so unloading the paper wouldn’t be the worst thing in the eyes of the shareholders. The big holdup, Shafer writes, is the sentimental value:

The paper means a lot to the Graham family, so it’s not a cinch. But the steady stream of bad business news coming out of the company is enough to persuade anybody to sell the newspaper division. Like most newspapers in the developed world, the Post is limping. In the first quarter of the year, its newspaper division reported an operating loss of $22.6 million; Post print advertising was down 17 percent; and Post daily circulation was down 9.8 percent (Sunday down 5.8 percent). Newsroom headcount has shrunk from a high of 900 to about 600 today. The whole company remains profitable, however, thanks to its diversification. It owns the Kaplan education outfit, television stations and a cable division, all of which remain in the black, so Don Graham needn’t sell the paper anytime soon to make his rent.

Bloomberg has long been said to covet owning one of the nation’s major newspapers. And the Post, Shafer argues, is the perfect fit. The New York Times, which Shafer writes Bloomberg once talked about buying, would be a disastrous acquisition. For all the Times’ ups and downs, it is a “cathedral of journalism” where the will of the newsroom trumps that of the executive suite.

The Post, however, could be a bit more flexible, especially when it comes to business coverage. The Post’s national and international business pages are already heavily farmed out to Bloomberg News, and with a shrinking newsroom overall, it could use the influx of the talent at Bloomberg LP’s various brands—the newswire service, the premium Bloomberg Government and Bloomberg Businessweek, which is a much improved magazine from the shell of Businessweek that Bloomberg purchased a few years ago.

But Shafer doesn’t recommmend Mike Bloomberg as the Post’s savior simply because he can afford it. The Post is still an enviable brand when it comes to politics and foreign affairs:

Combining the Post newsroom and name with Bloomberg’s news network (more than 2,200 editorial hands around the world), the Bureau of National Affairs (600 reporters, lawyers and editors), and the company’s other outlets would spawn an unstoppable news machine. Imagine the journalistic permutations: A beefed-up daily Post (more business than the Times, more politics than the Journal), a niche publication to counterattack Politico, a refashioned website to dominate the political and economic discussion, and a breakthrough Web-based TV news site. His terminal would overfloweth with quality news!

Of course, Shafer’s essay is all speculative, and other Post-watchers aren’t so sure the Graham family is ready to separate itself from a newspaper it has owned for nearly 80 years.

“I’d just note that the Post already is already owned by a benevolent rich guy who’s very patient about the newspaper reinventing itself,” Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon writes in an email.

Earlier this month, Beaujon’s colleague Rick Edmonds wrote that despite several setbacks, not everything at the Post is going to pot. It’s true that some top editors like Raju Nasiretti (now at The Wall Street Journal) are leaving and buyouts have thinned the Metro and Style sections, but Edmonds noted that the company is doing well in many areas. While it is one of the last holdouts among big papers when it comes to an online paywall, Edmonds chalked it up to good web numbers.

My hunch is that the current traffic, including national and international readers, supports an ad base management chooses not to endanger, though the current stall-out could be reason to reconsider.

And the Post company’s pension plan, Edmonds wrote, is actually well in the black. Same for Kaplan and the television stations.

Still, Shafer’s essay is about the newspaper, not the company. And it was only two years ago that Graham unloaded another money-losing journalistic operation—Newsweek—for $1 (and a mountain of assumed debt). But if Bloomberg really wants a major newspaper he can call his own, Shafer makes a good case for what the New York mayor can do in his twilight years.

And if Shafer’s forecast becomes reality, Beaujon has one recommendation for how a Bloomberg administration could jolt the Post.

“If Bloomberg brought back Henry Allen to work as a bouncer in Style, though, he’d have my vote.”