The McClatchy Co. said Monday it plans to sell off 12 of the 32 papers it will acquire as part of its $4.5 billion buyout of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, leaving an opening for Denver- based ap.
“We’re looking at our options,” said Jody Lodovic, president of MediaNews, the seventh-largest U.S. newspaper chain and owner of The Denver Post. “They are going to spin out some things that might be of interest to us.”
Among the papers for sale are the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy said those papers don’t fit its strategy of acquiring papers in growing markets. Some of the papers McClatchy plans to keep are The Kansas City (Mo.) Star, The Miami Herald and The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.
Lodovic said the California papers up for sale – the Mercury News, The Monterey County Herald and the Contra Costa Times – are of interest to MediaNews.
“They’re right in our backyard,” he said.
MediaNews owns 22 papers in northern California, including papers in Oakland, San Mateo and Eureka.
Jim Naughton, a former Knight Ridder executive and former president of the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists based in St. Petersburg, Fla., said MediaNews could essentially surround San Francisco with the California acquisitions.
“I would be surprised if that combination didn’t emerge,” Naughton said.
The leading daily paper in San Francisco is the Chronicle. Denver financier Philip Anschutz bought the San Francisco Examiner two years ago and turned it into a free paper. A call to his Denver-based newspaper company, Clarity Media Group, was not returned Monday.
Lodovic said he didn’t think any of the available Knight Ridder papers fit Clarity’s business model.
William Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of ap, reportedly toured the Philadelphia papers recently with other MediaNews executives. MediaNews owns four smaller newspapers in Pennsylvania.
But Lodovic said Monday that “Pennsylvania is not as interesting as California.”
One other possible bidder for the spinoff papers is the Newspaper Guild, a national union that represents newspaper employees. The Guild represents workers at eight of the 12 papers that McClatchy plans to sell.
Knight Ridder put itself on the market after its largest shareholder, a Florida money-management firm, complained last year about its poor stock performance. The stock traded at about $53 a share at the time. McClatchy’s bid amounted to $67.25 a share in cash and stock.
The acquisition would make McClatchy the second-largest newspaper company in the nation. McClatchy already owns 12 dailies, including newspapers in Sacramento, Minneapolis and Raleigh, N.C.
MediaNews and Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain, based in McLean, Va., reportedly were interested in a possible joint bid for Knight Ridder before Knight Ridder agreed Sunday night to sell to McClatchy.
MediaNews and Gannett already have partnerships in Texas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, California and Michigan.
Staff writer Steve McMillan can be reached at 303-820-1695 or smcmillan@denverpost.com.
