Media Monitor: January 14

• McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt tells Editor & Publisher Avista Capital Partners wasn't the only company interested in buying the Star Tribune, but he wouldn't disclose names of other bidders, nor would he comment on whether any Minnesota-based firms made offers. His response to a City Pages article titled after a Strib staffer's assessment "Pruitt is a joke": "I would feel worse if they were happy that we were selling them."

• As if following the lead of e-democracy's Minnesota gubernatorial e-debate this fall, The Huffington Post announced it'll be hosting the first ever presidential online debates.

• Bill Moyers, who returns to PBS with the weekly public affairs show April 25, evoked Martin Luther King's legacy in his keynote at the National Conference on Media Reform this weekend, comparing "big media corporations to plantation owners and American media consumers to their slaves." [YouTube].