Perhaps the most memorable quote about Clint Reilly’s lawsuit to stop the sale of the Mercury News and other former Knight Ridder papers to Dean Singleton came from Singleton himself. The chairman of MediaNews told Dale Kasler of the Sacramento Bee that Reilly’s lawsuit was a “sideshow,” and added, “You can’t have a circus ’til the clowns show up.”

• One other note: The first story about Reilly’s lawsuit moved on the AP wire at about 4 p.m. Thursday, which meant most of the daily newspapers in the region had the story in their Friday editions. Not the Chron, however. It didn’t print anything about it until Saturday. Presumably the Chron decided to wait until Reilly actually filed the suit on Friday, or perhaps it wanted to have its own reporter write the story instead of using the AP version. SFGate.com did post the AP story at about 7 p.m. Thursday.