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Maybe Ron Burkle really does believe in the old saw about how the third time’s the charm.

The billionaire Los Angeles investor has expressed interest in working with the union that represents Dow Jones employees, as well as the Newspaper Guild, in an attempt to mount a counter-bid to News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones. (That’s him in the picture on the right with former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on the left. That big check is Burkle’s too.)

So far, Burkle hasn’t hit any jackpots in the newspaper game. His investment firm backed a union attempt to buy a dozen newspapers that McClatchy wanted to sell after buying Knight Ridder (they lost), and he and fellow LA billionaire Eli Broad tried to buy Tribune Co. (they also lost).

It may be hard to beat Murdoch’s $60 a share offer, but the union thinks they have a chance. As much as the union’s hot to work with Burkle, it’s also being clear that it is open to working with other bidders too. There is a list of up to 10 people, the Dow Jones union’s president told us, but he would only name one: Warren Buffett.

Buffett has a bigger bank account, but Burkle has an ace up his sleeve: Jeffrey Johnson, the former publisher of the Los Angeles Times. After Tribune axed him over his decision to resist further job cuts, he went to work for Burkle.

Sort of reminds us of that line in that David Lynch movie “Lost Highway” — There’s no such thing as a bad coincidence.

Update: Silly us for not throwing this in before. It’s not the first time that Murdoch and Burkle have had a run-in. Burkle complained last year that former New York Post gossip columnist Jared Paul Stern tried to shake him down in return for keeping negative stories about Burkle out of the paper. The Post, which Murdoch owns, subsequently fired Stern, and Stern has since sued Burkle, among others.