New York Observer staffers are accustomed to whispers about the fate of the city’s cheeky salmon-colored weekly. The latest buzz is that actor Robert De Niro and his two cofounders of the TriBeCa Film Festival are in talks to purchase the newspaper from its founding publisher, Arthur Carter.

Mr. De Niro, producer Jane Rosenthal, and her venture capitalist husband, Craig Hatkoff, are the newest names to surface as potential buyers of the broadsheet, which is believed to lose about $2 million annually. A Wall Street banker who owns New York magazine, Bruce Wasserstein, and Miramax Films co-founders, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, are among others who have expressed interest in buying the press- and society-heavy newspaper in recent years.

“Every generation of Observer reporters has had to deal with some kind of rumor regarding the paper’s future, and yet it has managed to not only survive but thrive as one of New York’s premier journalistic institutions,” an Atlantic Monthly correspondent who is a former Observer press columnist, Sridhar Pappu, said.

Ms. Rosenthal and Mr. Hatkoff refused to comment on the reported negotiations, as did the Observer’s editor, Peter Kaplan.

Sources said Mr. Kaplan is leading the search for a buyer, more so than in the past, when Mr. Carter was in charge of the talks. Three editorial staffers contacted yesterday said they were not privy to any information about a possible sale of the newspaper.