It really is “come back media moguls, all is forgiven”, isn’t it?

John Lyons’ Australian item on who put the bullet in The Bulletin is pretty much of a piece with the rest of the coverage of its closure. It’s the fault of the soulless beancounters from private equity, who know nothing about media and everything about cutting costs. If only the Packers were still in charge. I mean, OMG, Ros Packer wasn’t even given “the courtesy of a phone call”. An outrage.

Making it worse of course is that the beancounters are all foreigners (not like Rupert Murdoch). Americans. Scots. Even Chinese , for heaven’s sake. John Archibald must be on high rotation in his grave. Maybe the Jews were involved as well?

The rehabilitation of the moguls since the media law changes in 2006 really has been amazing to see – and Crikey isn’t exempt from this. When Coonan and Howard managed to get their rather limited changes through, most commentators conjured nightmarish visions of Packer, Stokes and the Murdochs gulping down our diversity in a single bite and laying waste to our carefully-regulated media Eden. Instead, the sudden emergence of private equity in Australia’s media companies took a lot of them by surprise.

It shouldn’t have – those at the legal and financial end of the media sector knew that foreign pension funds were eager to get into Australia’s media. One of the sector’s best lawyers confidently predicted that, following passage of the media laws, all three metro TV networks would become foreign-controlled. He was bang on the money.

Possibly because they didn’t see private equity coming, for a lot of journalists and commentators there’s now a roseate hue about the age of moguls. They may have been the embodiment of evil, but at least they cared about the media. Much better than those faceless, foreign accountants who only care about the bottom line.

As if Rupert Murdoch ever cared about anything else.

Even the laments about the passing of The Bulletin recognise that it had failed to find a viable role. It couldn’t be topical, because it was out of date by the time it hit the streets. Nor could it manage the quality essay-style of monthly or quarterly magazines. It was a mid-20th century business model, and it had been roadkill on the information superhighway for years.

In fact you get the impression the main reason the Packers kept it on life support long past brain death was as an instrument in their vendetta against Paul Keating – one that Lyons revels in reliving in his article. With both Kerry Packer and The Bulletin now dead, Keating might be entitled to think he’s won that particular stoush.

Vendettas against public figures are exactly the sort of thing you won’t get from private equity media owners. And to hear the eulogies of The Bulletin , apparently that’s a bad thing.