By: Mark Fitzgerald With the deadline for bids set for Wednsesday, this will be a long Memorial Day weekend for the would-be buyers shaping up offers for the remaining six newspapers that The McClatchy Co. is selling off from its acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc.
The auction of the so-called orphans has gone remarkably swiftly, despite some initial Wall Street skepticism about what kind of market interest there would be in dailies serving markets that McClatchy's own chairman and CEO, Gary Pruitt, branded as "slow-growth" and not up to the chain's standards.
In fact, interest -- gauged at least by the number of people trooping through the papers to kick the tires -- has only seemed to grow as the auction proceeded from such glamour properties as the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News to the supposedly fading Philadelphia Inquirer and its tabloid sibling Philadelphia Daily News to, now, the dailies in such Plains and Rust Belt cities as Duluth, Akron, and Grand Forks, N.D.
The Akron Beacon Journal, for instance, has reportedly been toured by at least four groups, including the publishing company of its rival for northern Ohio influence, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
Representatives of Advance Publications Inc. and the P-D toured the B-J on May 17 and 18, according to an article in Friday's Beacon Journal by business writer Gloria Irwin.
Also touring the premises, according to the B-J, were officials of Black Press Ltd. and Onex Corp., who made a bid on the Philadelphia papers that prompted some staffers there to petition Pruitt to reject the offer.
Citing unnamed "people close to the process," the Beacon Journal also said representatives of HM Capital Partners -- a Dallas-based private equity firm once known as Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst -- have also met with officials of the newspaper.
Billionaire Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos., which is backing a "worker-friendly" bid from the Newspaper Guild for all the orphans, is also expected to make a play for the Beacon Journal.
Richard Connor, a former Fort Worth (Texas) Star Telegram publisher, toured another Knight Ridder orphan, the Times-Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., last Monday, according to the Fort Worth Business Press, where Connor is now editor and publisher. He toured the facilities with representatives of HM Capital.
The remaining orphans -- the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune; Superior (Wisc.) Daily Telegram; Grand Fork (N.D.) Herald; and Aberdeen (S.D.) American News -- have also received much attention from potential bidders.
In addition to reported visits by Yucaipa, the papers have been toured by representatives of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI), and Forum Communications, publisher of the Fargo (N.D.) Forum, as well as at least three parties that did not identify themselves.
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