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PHILADELPHIA - A potential buyer of Knight Ridder Inc. toured the Philadelphia newspapers' facilities Thursday, the largest and most recent delegation of several that have been kicking tires at company plants across the country.
A delegation headed by William Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group of Denver, spent at least two hours meeting with Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. publisher Joseph Natoli, then drove with him to Conshohocken, Pa., to look at the company's Schuylkill Printing Plant.
Singleton, in a brief phone interview, said he had "always liked Philadelphia" and that he was visiting "most" of the Knight Ridder papers, but declined to comment on his plans.
His company operates dailies in Denver; Detroit; Oakland, Calif.; Salt Lake City; El Paso, Texas, and dozens of smaller markets, and runs a group of papers in south-central Pennsylvania in alliance with Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper chain and another prospective Knight Ridder buyer.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News together account for one-seventh of Knight Ridder's home delivery and direct sales and one-sixth of its advertising, circulation and online revenue, but only about one-tenth of its profit.
The papers have been hurt by department-store consolidations and cutbacks in other advertising categories such as telecom. As in other markets, readers and classified advertisers are slowly migrating from printed papers to Internet sites, which have so far proved less profitable for newspapers.
Singleton was accompanied on the visit by a delegation that included Norman Alpert, principal at Vestar Capital Partners in New York, a private-equity firm that has also expressed interest in the chain; and Gary L. Watson, longtime head of Gannett Co.'s newspaper division, until his resignation in December.
Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon IV said he did not know about the visit.
The MediaNews delegation is the most recent, but not the only, potential buyer's group to visit the papers in recent weeks. A small delegation from the California-based McClatchy chain has visited the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. McClatchy has declined to talk about its plans.
Besides rival chains and private-equity investors, would-be owners include Yucaipa Cos., a California supermarket and airline operator that is cooperating with the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America union in an attempt to buy nine unionized Knight Ridder papers, including the two in Philadelphia.
Knight Ridder, under pressure from shareholders disappointed by the company's performance on Wall Street, wants to sell the papers as a group. Analysts say a decision is possible as early as March, but they are divided as to whether any buyer is willing to pay much more than the recent stock price of about $63 a share.
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
