Bids for Newsweek are due to Allen & Co. on Thursday at 5 p.m, according to Keith Kelly. At this point, the head count of interested parties is slightly messy, and probably irrelevant.
There may be as many as four or five, or even twelve parties getting ready to hand in bids, but a winning bid could likely come from left field, as with Bloomberg’s purchase of BusinessWeek.
Former Daily News CEO Fred Drasner, who’s teaming up with former Dow Jones Newswire president Paul Ingrassia and Fast Company founder Alan Webber, might be the most experienced of the bidders who have publicly expressed interest.
That said, Thomson Reuters and Politico parent Allbritton have been very quiet. Reuters did not submit a letter of interest in the first round, but there are rumors that the company is still putting together a bid. Is Reuters the quiet company waiting in the wings to steal Newsweek at the last minute?
Meanwhile, the remaining Newsweek staff is packing up their offices on Hudson street to move into space uptown, or somewhere. Who knows where the magazine will land.
