A victory for newspapers?

Today there are lots of people talking about McClatchy’s $4.5 billion offer to purchase Knight Ridder. The buzz concerns McClatchy’s intention to sell Knight Ridder’s higher profile papers such as the San Jose Mercury News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. These papers, according to McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, aren’t in communities where the growth rate of the population, and hence the circulation and advertising base, is sufficient enough to justify keeping the papers. There’s a fair bit of agreement that McClatchy is a newspaper-focused company committed to the future of journalism, not a company that dances to the tune of short-term Wall Street analysts. Still, the man who some say forced Knight Ridder’s sale, hedge fund guru Bruce S. Sherman, also owns a stake of McClatchy, and the sale of some of the papers troubles journalistic purists. Potential buyers for the Knight Ridder castoffs include William Dean Singleton, whose Media News company owns a string of papers in California, Colorado and elsewhere. Stay tuned.