Phil Anschutz, the billionaire oilman who owns the Examiner newspapers in San Francisco and Washington, is in talks to buy the Weekly Standard from Rupert Murdoch, the LA Times reports. The Times says:

Now that Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, … whose conservative editorial page wields a much bigger political stick, he may no longer really need the Weekly Standard, which preaches much the same message, but to a considerably smaller audience.

The Weekly Standard was founded by William Kristol in 1996, and is edited by Kristol and Fred Barnes, two pundits who appear regularly on Murdoch’s Fox News.