There was both joy and despair across the Knight Ridder newspaper chain as employees learned that the McClatchy Company, which announced on Monday to acquire the company’s 32 newspapers, would promptly sell 12 of them.

Those at the Knight Ridder papers being kept by McClatchy — including The Miami Herald and The Charlotte Observer — will be working for a family-controlled business.

‘‘This is the absolute best outcome we could have hoped for,’’ said Carol Rosenberg, a reporter at The Miami Herald, the largest paper to be retained. ‘‘It’s a newspaper family with a tradition of journalism, not a corporate chop shop.’’

But those at the 12 papers to be sold — including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The San Jose Mercury News — now face continued uncertainty about who will own them, and the prospect of a less desirable owner than the one they had expected.

Rick Nichols, The Inquirer’s food columnist and a 27-year veteran of the paper, said the staff was deflated, as if it ‘‘had been orphaned and told that its replacement parent didn’t even want it.’’ Stu Bykofsky, a columnist at The Philadelphia Daily News, which is also one of the 12 papers back on the block, said he understood that of all the entities that had expressed interest in Knight Ridder, McClatchy was the best. He was disappointed the company was selling the Philadelphia papers so quickly.

‘‘It’s like death by drowning instead of death by fire,’’ Bykofsky said.

McClatchy, which owns 12 papers — including The Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The News & Observer in Raleigh, NC — will become the nation’s second-biggest newspaper company, behind Gannett, if it completes the $4.5 billion acquisition.

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