And so the latest bit of hard news in the sad, sad tale of the demise of the once-great Knight-Ridder newspaper chain hit the wires today:
PHILADELPHIA May 23, 2006 (AP)— McClatchy Co. is selling The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News for $562 million to a group of local investors who hope to reverse circulation declines by emphasizing local news and doing more with the Internet.
The two Philadelphia papers are being bought by a group led by advertising executive Brian Tierney and Bruce Toll, co-founder of luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc. The papers are currently owned by Knight Ridder Inc. and are among 12 that McClatchy doesn’t plan to keep once it completes its purchase of the rest of the company.
McClatchy and the investor group said in a statement that they intend to complete the deal around the same time that McClatchy closes its deal for Knight Ridder, which is expected this summer. McClatchy will receive $515 million in cash, and the investment group, Philadelphia Media Holdings, will assume $47 million in pension liabilities.
A sad tale? Or is it a case of shooting yourself in the foot and bleeding to death?
On his blog ‘Kiko’s House,’ Shaun Mullen, a prize-winning former Knight-Ridder reporter/editor has a MUST READ POST that needs to be read in FULL. Here’s a tiny part of what he says, a needed reminder that many stories on Knight-Ridder have seemingly clouded part of the issue:
Back in the day, Knight Ridder was the class of U.S. newspaper chains because of its commitment to excellence. That hasn’t necessarily changed. But at some point the balance between having well-resourced newsrooms and keeping Knight Ridder’s stock price up tipped in the direction of Wall Street, and Ridder was the tipper in chief.
Ridder said two things during my two decades-plus in Philadelphia that best exemplify why he became the Darth Vader of an industry that trashed newspapers although they were in decent financial health, remained viable investments and vital players in their communities.
Read his post to find out what they are — and learn a lot more as well.
In reading his post, yours truly, a former employee of Knight-Ridder Newspapers (The Wichita Eagle-Beacon 1980-1982), has to say two things:
(1) He’s right.
(2) I almost forgot.
HE’S RIGHT: When I sought a staff newspaper job after writing on a free-lance basis for five years for newspapers such as The Chicago Daily News and The Christian Science Monitor from New Delhi, Madrid, and other foreign news spots, Knight-Ridder was the up-and-coming JEWEL of newspaper chains. (Several journalists in the late 70s would say that KRN editors had a high divorce rate because they were so “married” to their newspapers).
The San Jose Mercury News and the Miami Herald and other KRN big city dailies were aspiring Washington Posts. The conventional wisdom among young journalists was that KRN was a great place to be, a career destination, because its individual papers and the chain had as the top priority editorial excellence. From its superb foreign news coverage to its Washington coverage to its comprehensive, content-heavy local news — all produced with the help of hugely dedicated and tough editors — Knight-Ridder put out one of the best newspaper products anywhere.
The quality was consistent: you could visit a small city and see a Knight-Ridder paper and it had the same quality (mainly because it was usually staffed by many reporters and editors seeking to move on to the bigger KRN papers and their standards were exacting).
I ALMOST FORGOT how I noticed a definite change. This change seemed dramatic in recent years, at least in terms of the consistency of KRN newspapers’ overall look. Some years ago, after not seeing the San Jose and Miami newspapers for many years, I picked them up and was shocked by the change in the papers’ overall content and “feel.” They were still good papers but it was as if someone had decided to reduce quality content and not necessarily because the “news hole” had been reduced, as pages became fewer and advertising was not necessarily as plentiful.
The papers seemed less compelling, less satisfying, less sparkling, less aspiring to be regional (or national) voices. Now they were just good local papers. In the 70s, 80s and even the early 90s they seemed to be so much more. It was NOT as if you felt you were reading papers less committed to excellence; it seemed as if the papers had somehow been punched in the stomach.
Something had been cut out of Knight-Ridder, even though its papers and news bureaus still have some of the finest reporters and editors in the world (Knight-Ridder‘s Washington Bureau produces some of the best reporting and analysis around today).
Muller’s post pinpoints what it was.
Perhaps, in the end, what Ridder really cut out had to do with some things called journalistic passion…and “heart.”
SOME OTHER VIEWS ON THE DEMISE OF KRN. These are excerpts so read the entire posts:
The “heart� that Joe mourns the loss of is missing from a lot of American businesses these days: not just newspapers but the automobile industry, airlines, entertainment companies, many others, representing practically every segment of the economy. After the 2000 contraction even the tech sector seems to have lost its sparkle. Does Microsoft still have the missionary fervor they had 20 years ago?
The obvious answer is greed but I think the problem goes a little farther than that. I blame professional management—not just MBA’s but the concept itself.
—Classical Values examines some of the local Philadelphia and blog reaction to the sale and in a detailed analysis writes:
Big national chains are bad, and local ownership is good, right? Not necessarily. It depends on who the local parties are — and whom you ask…Bad and “scary” times ahead? The Inquirer has been struggling, and now it appears that it will survive. What is scary about that?…
..I’m glad the Inquirer will survive, and I think it’s a good thing for for it to become an independent local newspaper again. I see no reason to expect to see any change in their editorial viewpoints, and I am sure I’ll continue to have regular disagreements. Nothing scary about it.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.