Knight Ridder

Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by McClatchy on June 27, 2006, it was the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspaper brands sold. Its headquarters were located in San Jose, California.

History

Origins

The corporate ancestors of Knight Ridder were Knight Newspapers, Inc. and Ridder Publications, Inc. The first company was founded by John S. Knight upon inheriting control of the '' Akron Beacon Journal'' from his father, Charles Landon Knight, in 1933; the second company was founded by Herman Ridder when he acquired the , a German language newspaper, in 1892. As anti-German sentiment increased in the interwar period, Ridder successfully transitioned into English language publishing by acquiring '' The Journal of Commerce'' in 1926.

Both companies went public in 1969 and merged on July 11, 1974. For a brief time, the combined company was the largest newspaper publisher in the United States.

At its peak

Knight Ridder had a long history of innovation in technology. It was the first newspaper publisher to experiment with videotex when it launched its Viewtron system in 1983. After investing six years of research and $50 million into the service, Knight Ridder shut down Viewtron in 1986 when the service's interactivity features proved more popular than news delivery.

Knight-Ridder purchased Dialog Information Services Inc. from Lockheed Corporation in August 1988. In October 1988, the company placed its eight broadcast television stations up for sale to reduce debt and to pay for the purchase of Dialog.

In 1997, when Tony Ridder was CEO, it bought four newspapers from The Walt Disney Company formerly owned by Capital Cities Communications, after Disney's purchase of Cap Cities mainly for the ABC television network ( The ''Kansas City Star'', ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'', '' Belleville News-Democrat'' and '' (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader'' for $1.65 billion. It was, at the time, the most expensive newspaper acquisition in history.

For most of its existence, the company was based in Miami, with headquarters on the top floor of the Miami Herald building. In 1998, Knight Ridder relocated its headquarters from Miami to San Jose, Calif.; there, that city's '' Mercury News''—the first daily newspaper to regularly publish its full content online—was booming along with the rest of Silicon Valley. The internet division had been established there three years earlier. The company rented several floors in a downtown high-rise as its new corporate base.

In November 2005, the company announced plans for "strategic initiatives," which involved the possible sale of the company. This came after three major institutional shareholders publicly urged management to put the company up for sale. At the time, the company had a higher profit margin than many Fortune 500 companies, including ExxonMobil.

Iraq War

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Knight Ridder DC Bureau reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel wrote a series of articles critical of purported intelligence suggesting links between Saddam Hussein, the obtainment of weapons of mass destruction, and Al-Qaeda, citing anonymous sources.

Landay and Strobel's stories ran counter to reports by ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'' and other national publications, resulting in some newspapers within Knight-Ridder chain refusing to run the two reporter's stories. After the war and the discrediting of many initial news reports written and carried by others, Strobel and Landay received the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award from the Senate Press Gallery on February 5, 2004, for their coverage.

The '' Huffington Post'' headlined the two as "the reporting team that got Iraq right". The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' described the reporting as "unequaled by the Bigfoots working at higher-visibility outlets such as the ''New York Times'', the ''Washington Post'', the ''Wall Street Journal'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''".

Later after the war, their work was featured in Bill Moyers' PBS documentary "Buying The War" and was dramatized in the 2017 film '' Shock and Awe''.

Purchase by McClatchy

On March 13, 2006, The McClatchy Company announced its agreement to purchase Knight Ridder for a purchase price of $6.5 billion in cash, stock and debt. The deal gave McClatchy 32 daily newspapers in 29 markets, with a total circulation of 3.3 million. However, for various reasons, McClatchy decided immediately to resell twelve of these papers.

On April 26, 2006, McClatchy announced it was selling the ''San Jose Mercury News'', ''Contra Costa Times'', ''Monterey Herald'', and ''St. Paul Pioneer Press'' to MediaNews Group (with backing from the Hearst Corporation) for $1 billion.

List of newspapers

Daily newspapers owned by Knight Ridder and its predecessors – listed alphabetically by place of publication – included:

* '' The American News'' (Aberdeen, South Dakota), 1928–2006
* '' Akron Beacon Journal'' (Akron, Ohio), 1903–2006
* '' Belleville News-Democrat'' (Belleville, Illinois), 1997–2006
* '' The Bellingham Herald'' (Bellingham, Washington), 2005–2006
* ''Sun Herald'' (Biloxi, Mississippi), 1986–2006
* '' Boca Raton News'' (Boca Raton, Florida), 1969–1997
* '' The Idaho Statesman'' (Boise, Idaho), 2005–2006
* '' The Daily Camera'' ( Boulder, Colorado), 1969–1997
* ''The Herald (Bradenton)'' (Bradenton, Florida), 1973–2006
* ''The Charlotte Observer'' (Charlotte, North Carolina), 1955–2006
* ''Chicago Daily News'' (Chicago, Illinois), 1944–1959
* '' The State'' (Columbia, South Carolina), 1986–2006
* '' Columbus Ledger-Enquirer'' (Columbus, Georgia), 1973–2006
* ''Detroit Free Press'' (Detroit, Michigan), 1940–2005
* ''Duluth News Tribune'' (Duluth, Minnesota), 1936–2006
* ''The News-Sentinel'' (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 1980–2006
* ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'' (Fort Worth, Texas), 1997–2006
* '' The Post-Tribune'' (Gary, Indiana), 1966–1998
* ''Grand Forks Herald'' (Grand Forks, North Dakota), 1929–2006
* ''The Kansas City Star'' ( Kansas City, Missouri), 1997–2006
* ''Lexington Herald-Leader'' (Lexington, Kentucky), 1973–2006
* '' Long Beach Press-Telegram'' (Long Beach, California), 1952–1997
* '' The Telegraph'' ( Macon, Georgia), 1969–2006
* ''Florida Keys Keynoter'' ( Marathon, Florida), 1956-2006
* ''The Miami Herald), 1937–2006
* '' El Nuevo Herald'' (Miami, Florida), 1977–2006
* '' The Monterey County Herald'' (Monterey, California), 1997–2006
* ''The Sun News'' (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina), 1986–2006
* '' The Journal of Commerce'' (New York City), 1926–1995
* ''The Olathe News'' (Olathe, Kansas), 2000–2006
* '' The Olympian'' (Olympia, Washington), 2005–2006
* '' Palo Alto Daily News'' (Palo Alto, California), 2005–2006
* ''Pasadena Star-News'' ( Pasadena, California), 1956–1989
* ''Philadelphia Daily News'' (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 1969–2006
* ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 1969–2006
* ''St. Paul Pioneer Press'' (St. Paul, Minnesota), 1927–2006
* ''San Jose Mercury News'' (San Jose, California), 1952–2006
* '' The Tribune'' (San Luis Obispo, California), 1997–2006
* '' Centre Daily Times'' (State College, Pennsylvania), 1979–2006
* '' Tallahassee Democrat'' (Tallahassee, Florida), 1965–2005
* '' Contra Costa Times'' (Walnut Creek, California), 1995–2006
* ''The Wichita Eagle'' (Wichita, Kansas), 1973–2006
* ''Times Leader'' (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), 1997–2006

Knight Ridder-owned companies

A list of companies that were at one time or another owned by Knight Ridder:
* Vu/Text: 1982–1996. Merged with PressLink to become MediaStream.
* PressLink: ??–1996. Merged with Vu/Text to become MediaStream.
* MediaStream: 1996–2001. Acquired by NewsBank
* DataStar: Acquired from Radio Schweiz Ltd., merged with Dialog to form Knight Ridder Information
* Dialog (online database): Merged with DataStar to form Knight Ridder Information
* Knight Ridder Information: ??–1997, Acquired by MAID, later by Thomson
* Knight Ridder Financial Inc: 1985–1996. Acquired by Global Financial trading as Bridge Data.
* RealCities Network: 2004–2006. RealCities was a portal/hub website for Knight-Ridder group. It was absorbed with The McClatchy Company into McClatchy Interactive and sold to Chicago-based Centro in 2008.

Knight Ridder-owned television stations

Knight Newspapers entered broadcasting in 1946 via the purchase of minority ownership stakes in WQAM/Miami, WIND/Chicago, and WAKR/Akron; all three stations were in markets served by a Knight newspaper. The minority stake in WAKR's parent company, Summit Radio, also included the establishment of WAKR-TV (channel 49), as well as WAKR-FM (97.5) and six radio stations purchased in Dayton, Ohio, Dallas, Texas, and Denver, Colorado. WAKR-TV was built and signed on by Summit on July 23, 1953 as the Akron market's ABC affiliate, moving to channel 23 on December 1, 1967. Knight Ridder divested its stake in Summit Radio by 1977; a planned merger between the two entities in 1968 failed to be consummated.

In 1954, Ridder Newspapers launched WDSM-TV in Superior, Wisconsin, serving the Duluth, Minnesota market. Initially a CBS affiliate, it switched to its present NBC affiliation a year and a half after the station's launch. It was spun off after Ridder's merger with Knight Newspapers, Inc.

From 1956 to 1962, Knight co-owned a then- NBC affiliate, WCKT in Miami, Florida, with the Cox publishing family.

Following the divestment of their stake in Summit Radio, Knight Ridder acquired Poole Broadcasting, which consisted of WJRT-TV in Flint, Michigan, WTEN in Albany, New York and its satellite WCDC in Adams, Massachusetts, and WPRI-TV in Providence, Rhode Island. Immediately after the acquisition of these stations was finalized, Knight Ridder cut a corporate affiliation deal with ABC, switching then-CBS affiliates WTEN/WCDC and WPRI (the latter of which eventually rejoined CBS) to ABC (WJRT was already affiliated with ABC when the affiliation deal was made). As part of the deal, Poole Broadcasting would eventually become Knight Ridder Broadcasting. Knight Ridder would acquire several television stations in medium-sized markets during the 1980s, including three stations owned by ''The Detroit News'' which the Gannett Company regulations on media cross-ownership and/or television duopolies then in effect. (None of Knight Ridder's later acquisitions changed their network affiliations under Knight Ridder ownership; for example, then-NBC affiliate WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama remained an NBC affiliate when it was owned by Knight Ridder and would switch to Fox several years after Knight Ridder sold the station.)

In early 1989, Knight Ridder announced its exit from broadcasting, selling all of its stations to separate buyers; the sales were finalized in the summer and early fall of that year. This deal was made in order to reduce their debt loads from the proceedings. One of the stations, WALA-TV went to Burnham Broadcasting for $40 million, while WKRN would go to Young Broadcasting for $50 million, KOLD-TV to News-Press & Gazette Company for an undisclosed price, and two television stations WPRI and WTKR to Narragansett Television L.P. for $150 million on February 18, 1989. This was followed by the following month with the sale of KTVY-TV to WHO-TV owner Palmer Communications, for $50 million. WTEN was the next-to-last station to be sold, going to Young Broadcasting for $38 million, and WJRT would eventually becoming the final Knight Ridder station, to be sold to SJL Broadcasting for $39 million.

Notes:
* (*) – ''While this station was owned by Summit Radio from 1953 to 1994, Knight Newspapers held a 45 percent minority stake in Summit that predated this station's establishment, this was fully divested by Knight Ridder in 1977.''
*(**) – ''This station was co-owned by Knight Newspapers and Cox Newspapers, long before Knight's merger with Ridder Publications.''
* (++) – ''This station was owned by Ridder Publications until the merger between Ridder and Knight forced its divestiture.''

Media

• ''Shock and Awe'', 2018 film about a group of journalists at Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau who investigate the reasons behind the Bush Administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Notable people

* Lee Hills

References

Further reading

*

External links

Knight Ridder - Chronology
(Archive)

Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

{{McClatchy

Knight Ridder
McClatchy
1933 establishments in Ohio
2006 disestablishments in California
Companies based in San Jose, California
Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Defunct broadcasting companies of the United States
Defunct financial data vendors
Mass media companies established in 1933
Mass media companies disestablished in 2006
Mass media in the San Francisco Bay Area
Ridder family
2006 mergers and acquisitions
1933 establishments in California