Across the Nation

HOUSTON — Former first lady Barbara Bush gave relief money to a hurricane relief fund on the condition that it be spent to buy educational software from her son Neil’s company.

The chief of staff of former President George H.W. Bush would not disclose the amount earmarked for purchases from Ignite Learning.

Since Barbara Bush’s gift, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight public schools with high numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools,” Jean Becker said Thursday.

Union complains about McClatchy bidding process

NEW YORK — A union representing newspaper workers complained Friday that it was not receiving full access to financial information from The McClatchy Co. that it needs to make a bid on 12 newspapers that McClatchy wants to sell.

McClatchy said earlier this month that it intended to sell the papers, which include The Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News, as part of its deal to acquire Knight Ridder Inc., the nation’s second-largest newspaper company. McClatchy intends to keep the other 20 papers owned by Knight Ridder.

The Newspaper Guild-CWA said it was told by McClatchy that the union could not have full access to financial information about the 12 papers since it wasn’t part of the original bidding process for all of Knight Ridder, which began last fall.

Nonetheless, Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the Communications Workers of America, of which the guild is an affiliate, said the union-backed group still planned to submit a bid by the Tuesday deadline.

McClatchy said in a statement that it has received "scores” of inquiries from prospective buyers about the papers, but declined to comment on the sale process.

However the company also said that after receiving the bids it would "carefully consider each of them and act in the best interest of McClatchy, taking into account the interests of stakeholders including shareholders, employees, readers, advertisers and communities.”

The union is working with The Yucaipa Cos., an investment firm run by California billionaire Ron Burkle, on arranging its bid. The union complained about the matter in a letter to McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt and to the company’s board of directors.

Robert Hall, a former publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, who is now working as an adviser to the union-backed group, had said Thursday that the bid for all 12 papers would go forward, but at that time he did not mention any difficulties gaining access to necessary financial data.

On Friday he said that as of Thursday the group had still thought that it would get access to the information. He said that once the bid is submitted next week, he expected that McClatchy would provide it with fuller access to the information, and that the group would ask for additional time to fully consider it.

"To us, it seems like the process is flawed, and that’s why we’re complaining,” Hall said.

Gannett Co. has said it is considering bids for some of the 12 newspapers, though it didn’t say which ones. MediaNews Group Inc., a privately held newspaper company based in Denver, is also widely believed to be interested in the papers. MediaNews Group has not returned repeated calls, including one made Friday.<