The Bids Are Rolling In! Wait, And Another! And Another!

Okay, so I was all ready to type up a post saying that PNI — the parent company of both the Inquirer and Daily News, which McClatchy is selling after buying Knight Ridder — had gotten only two bids, and then another story moved across the wire saying it had gotten three bids, then I went and got a sandwich, then I came back to as many as six companies who could be buying the papers.

Dow Jones is reporting that these groups have submitted official bids:

• Canadian publisher Black Press Ltd, with investment firm Onex Corp.
• Texas investor Christopher M. Harte
• Philadelphia businessmen Brian Tierney and Bruce Toll, and others
• Yucaipa, paired with the Newspaper Guild
• Possibly the New York Daily News, but maybe not. They dunno. It seems like they didn’t. But maybe they did.

MediaNews may make a bid, but declined to comment to Reuters on if it did or not. Which probably means it didn’t.

So what does this all mean? Well, not much, since these are the groups we all knew might put in bids for the paper. But since it seems like everyone put in a bid, who knows, there could be even more. Heck, it might come up that I made a bid for the papers. (I’m partnering with Bain.)

Bids roll in at McClatchy for Philly newspapers [Reuters/ABCNews.com]