The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, the city's two largest dailies, are being sold, and city reporters say that they are nervous and unsure of the future of the papers.
In a deal announced Monday, the McClatchy Company has agreed to pay about $4.5 billion in cash and stock to acquire the 32 newspapers owned by rival media giant Knight Ridder.
McClatchy, which also agreed to assume about $2 billion in debt, has announced it will sell 12 of those papers, including the Inquirer and the Daily News.
The sale has left staff members at these media outlets felling uncertain about their futures, which depend entirely on who ends up purchasing the papers.
"Most of us don't really have any idea what's going on," Inquirer reporter Kathleen Shea said.
After the decision, the Inquirer's staff felt as if it "had been orphaned and told that its replacement parent didn't want it," the paper's food columnist, Rick Nichols, told The New York Times.
The Newspaper Guild, a union of editorial employees at eight of the newspapers up for sale, is trying to ensure job security by taking part in the search for a buyer.
Shea said the Los Angeles financial group Yucaipa is the union's choice to buy the papers.
Other conceivable buyers might be another large media organization or a private investor.
Polk Laffoon, a 1970 Wharton MBA graduate and Knight Ridder's secretary and vice president of corporate relations, expressed his concern for the employees of the papers.
"We've very unhappy that the reporters, the circulation staff and the administrative staff is in the continued state of uncertainty," Polk said.
He said that McClatchy will sell the 12 papers because it "wants growth markets, and they don't feel that the 12 markets they are not retaining" are growing Polk said.
Inquirer deputy managing editor for news Carl Lavin said that the quality of the paper's staff will remain unchanged in spite of the difficulties.
"Journalism is in the hands of the journalists, and we have a hell of a lot of talent in our newsroom," Lavin said.
He added that significant change is inevitable with a shift in ownership.
"There are tremendous forces of change sweeping through our industry," Lavin added. But the reporters' "dedication and their professionalism, their concern with getting an edge in reporting and analyzing the world and getting it back to our readers is undiminished."
Although Lavin himself is unsure of his paper's future, he said that his staff should be confident of having work in the future.
"Anybody who wants to buy a newspaper nowadays needs people who know how to run a newspaper, and we know how to do that," Lavin said.
Extra! - The McClatchy Company agreed to buy rival media giant Knight Ridder for $4.5 billion on Monday - McClatchy later announced that they would seek to sell 12 of its 32 newly-acquired newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. - Some say that the resale is occurring because Philadelphia is not a growing market
