Will All The News Fit?

I’m adopting a “wait and see” attitude towards the recently-completed sale of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. to Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., which is a group formed of heavy industrial hitters, so to speak, in this area (I thought Dick Polman had some good words on this, and I echo his sentiments).

I’ll try to back up a bit here; PNI was owned by Knight Ridder, which was recently bought by the McClatchy chain a couple of months ago. However, after doing so, McClatchy announced that it was putting the PNI papers (the Inquirer and the Daily News) up for sale (and I wrote a poem about this trying to imitate Dr. Seuss where I said there would be “no 'white knight' offer from McClatchy” and I turned out to be dead wrong).

It concerns me that the most visible player of the owners is Brian Tierney, who has big time connections with the Catholic Church and the Republican Party as documented here (even though Robert Toll of the Toll homebuilding empire has been identified as the largest individual investor). That is worrisome to be sure, but for now, I think it’s “benefit of the doubt” time all around.

So now that we’ve settled this whole sale business FINALLY AND FOR GOOD, can the Inquirer get back to publishing “Blog Cabin” again? It’s Wednesday and you forgot again, people!