You're certainly right for personal advice, but does the New York Times not have a lot of money? They've certainly got the influence bit covered. Once you can buy enough of your own bureaucrats to tie up their bureaucrats, regulators' power isn't so clear.
More powerful than that though is that you don't want the regulators to have to do any work. Once they have work to do they are insanely efficient, at least when it involves punishing the person who made them do work.
