The McClatchy Company is the leading bidder for Knight-Ridder, plunking down over $4.8  billion US in cash and stocks.

The purchase price works out to more than $65 US per share, a figure seen as psychologically important to the newspaper industry (that's about what the company is worth now. Had people bid less, that would have been seen as a vote of non-confidence in newspapers by the market).

Here's a link to the NYT story and my previous blog post.

Blake Lambert, who had been freelancing out of Uganda for a number of news organizations, has essentially been declared not welcome. Apparently the government was unhappy with his reporting.