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When Mitt Romney announced on Friday that he would not seek the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, he cited the desire to "give other leaders in the party" a chance to win the White House. He did not mention the public mugging he had received from Rupert Murdoch, the media titan who had called him "a terrible candidate" and whose Wall Street Journal had suggested that his run in 2012 had been "a calamity."

There are a lot of reasons that the third time did not prove to be a charm for Romney's presidential ambitions, but Murdoch's public rebuke sure didn't help.

Having tried and failed to get his hands on Time Warner, Murdoch is back to king-making. As the man who controls both the Fox News Channel and The Journal, he doesn't exactly have to attend a precinct caucus to exercise political influence.

He's clearly enjoying life as a mogul and newspaper titan, enough to invite others to the party.

(New York magazine had earlier reported, based on not very much, that Bloomberg might try to buy the newspaper.)

Only two people in the world could have this conversation, whether in public or private: both are New York media owners, both with more money than many sovereign republics and both huge fans of the news and the organisations that trade in it.

Murdoch has a big national newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, and though Michael Bloomberg does not, they are otherwise similarly situated overlords. And so Murdoch's entreaty to his friend Bloomberg: C'mon in, the water is fine.

I don't think The New York Times is for sale, but it is a telling sentiment, a conversation among kings about what possessions are truly precious to the man, or men, with everything.

Even if The Times were for sale, how would it benefit Murdoch to have a rival paper in the hands of an equally moneyed media baron? It wouldn't, but it is in Murdoch's nature to stir the pot and create mischief.

He's mostly just having his version of fun, all the while tweaking a competitor, which is another hobby.

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David Carr: Media titans Murdoch, Bloomberg at play in politics and news