McClatchy Takes Bids on Two Philly Dailies

By: Seth Sutel McClatchy Co. on Wednesday began considering bids from several parties for two newspapers in Philadelphia, the latest to be sold as part of McClatchy's acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News are among 12 Knight Ridder newspapers that McClatchy doesn't plan to keep.

McClatchy has already sealed a deal to sell four of the newspapers to MediaNews Group Inc. for $1 billion. Once the two Philadelphia papers are sold, that would leave six more, mainly in smaller markets. A deal for the Philadelphia papers is expected to be concluded in the next two weeks.

The bidders for the two Philadelphia papers included Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News; Black Press Group Ltd., a Victoria, Canada-based newspaper publisher; and Yucaipa Cos., an investment firm that is working with a newspaper union. The bids were due late Tuesday.

Robert Hall, a former publisher of the Inquirer and Daily News who is working with Yucaipa, had said Monday that the group was "definitely" making a bid, but he declined to comment on the process on Wednesday, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Calls left with three other parties believed to be interested in the papers were not returned: investor Christopher M. Harte; MediaNews; and a group headed by Bruce Toll, a Philadelphia-based home builder.

A spokeswoman for McClatchy declined to comment, as did Joe Natoli, chairman and publisher of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which publishes the two papers.

Knight Ridder was forced to put itself up for sale last fall by its three largest shareholders, who had complained of poor share performance.

McClatchy wound up sealing a deal for Knight Ridder, but said it would only keep 20 of its 32 papers, saying the others didn't meet its acquisition criteria of being located in rapidly growing markets.

McClatchy also would have faced antitrust problems owning the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota since it already owns the Star Tribune in neighboring Minneapolis. The St. Paul paper was one of the four that MediaNews agreed to buy.