 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Knight Ridder" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | |
 The Knight Ridder building inSan Jose, California. | |
| Industry | Mass media |
|---|---|
| Predecessor |
|
| Founded | July 11, 1974; 50 years ago (1974-07-11) |
| Founder | |
| Defunct | June 27, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-06-27) (31 years, 11 months and 16 days) |
| Fate | Purchased by TheMcClatchy Company |
| Successor | TheMcClatchy Company |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Newspapers |
Knight Ridder/ˈrɪdər/ was an American media company, specializing innewspaper andInternetpublishing. Until it was bought byMcClatchy 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 inSan Jose, California.[1]
The corporate ancestors of Knight Ridder were Knight Newspapers, Inc. and Ridder Publications, Inc. The first company was founded byJohn S. Knight upon inheriting control of theAkron Beacon Journal from his father,Charles Landon Knight, in 1933; the second company was founded byHerman Ridder when he acquired theNew Yorker Staats-Zeitung, aGerman language newspaper, in 1892. Asanti-German sentiment increased in theinterwar period, Ridder successfully transitioned into English language publishing by acquiringThe 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.
Knight Ridder had a long history of innovation intechnology. It was the first newspaper publisher to experiment withvideotex when it launched itsViewtron 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.[2]
Knight-Ridder purchased Dialog Information Services Inc. fromLockheed 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.[3]
In 1997, when Tony Ridder was CEO, it bought four newspapers fromThe Walt Disney Company formerly owned byCapital Cities Communications, after Disney's purchase of Cap Cities mainly for theABC television network (TheKansas 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'sMercury 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 higherprofit margin than many Fortune 500 companies, includingExxonMobil.[4]
In the run-up to the2003 invasion of Iraq, Knight Ridder DC Bureau reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel wrote a series of articles critical of purported intelligence suggesting links betweenSaddam Hussein, the obtainment ofweapons of mass destruction, andAl-Qaeda, citing anonymous sources.
Landay and Strobel's stories ran counter to reports byThe New York Times,The Washington Post and other national publications, resulting in some newspapers within the Knight-Ridder chain refusing to run the two reporters' stories. After the war and the discrediting of many initial news reports written and carried by others, Strobel and Landay received theRaymond Clapper Memorial Award from the Senate Press Gallery on February 5, 2004, for their coverage.[5]
TheHuffington Post headlined the two as "the reporting team that got Iraq right".[6] TheColumbia Journalism Review described the reporting as "unequaled by the Bigfoots working at higher-visibility outlets such as theNew York Times, theWashington Post, theWall Street Journal and theLos Angeles Times".[7]
Later after the war, their work was featured inBill Moyers' PBS documentary "Buying The War"[8] and was dramatized in the 2017 filmShock and Awe.
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.[9] 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.[10]
On April 26, 2006, McClatchy announced it was selling theSan Jose Mercury News,Contra Costa Times,Monterey Herald, andSt. Paul Pioneer Press toMediaNews Group (with backing from theHearst Corporation) for $1 billion.[11]
Daily newspapers owned by Knight Ridder and its predecessors – listed alphabetically by place of publication – included:
A list of companies that were at one time or another owned by Knight Ridder:
Knight Newspapers entered broadcasting in 1946 via the purchase of minority ownership stakes inWQAM in Miami,WIND in Chicago, andWAKR in Akron; all three stations were in markets served by a Knight newspaper.[16][17][18] The minority stake in WAKR's parent company, Summit Radio, also included the establishment ofWAKR-TV (channel 49), as well asWAKR-FM (97.5) and six radio stations purchased inDayton, Ohio,Dallas, Texas, andDenver, Colorado.[19] WAKR-TV was built and signed on by Summit on July 23, 1953, as the Akron market'sABC affiliate,[20] moving to channel 23 on December 1, 1967.[21] Knight Ridder divested its stake in Summit Radio by 1977;[22] a planned merger between the two entities in 1968 failed to be consummated.[23]
In 1954, Ridder Newspapers launchedWDSM-TV inSuperior,Wisconsin, serving theDuluth,Minnesota market. Initially aCBS affiliate, it switched to its presentNBC 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 and theCox publishing family jointly operated Biscayne Television, which ownedNBC affiliateWCKT inMiami, Florida, as well asWCKR radio, which this entity purchased from Cox;[24] Knight sold off WQAM to a third party as part of Biscayne's formation.[25] Revelations of improper behavior and underhanded tactics by Biscayne[26][27][28] andNational Airlines (which signed onWPST-TV, also in Miami[29]) to secure their licenses, along with ethics violations within the FCC itself, resulted in the licenses for both stations being revoked.[30][31] A replacement license for WCKT was granted in 1960 toSunbeam Television, the lone bidder for the prior license not to have engaged in any unethical behavior;[32][33] Biscayne sold to Sunbeam WCKT's non-license assets: the studios,intellectual property and all off- and on-air personnel for the new station, which took the WCKT name for continuity.[34] Cox repurchased WCKR, reviving that station's prior WIOD call sign.[35]
Following the divestment of their stake in Summit Radio, Knight Ridder acquired Poole Broadcasting, which consisted ofWJRT-TV inFlint,Michigan,WTEN inAlbany,New York and its satellite WCDC inAdams,Massachusetts, andWPRI-TV inProvidence,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 byThe Detroit News which theGannett Company—which purchased the newspaper in 1986—could not keep due toFederal Communications Commission 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 affiliateWALA-TV inMobile,Alabama remained an NBC affiliate when it was owned by Knight Ridder and would switch toFox 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.[36] One of the stations,WALA-TV went to Burnham Broadcasting for $40 million, whileWKRN would go toYoung Broadcasting for $50 million,KOLD-TV toNews-Press & Gazette Company for an undisclosed price, and two television stationsWPRI andWTKR to Narragansett Television L.P. for $150 million on February 18, 1989.[37] This was followed by the following month with the sale ofKTVY-TV toWHO-TV owner Palmer Communications, for $50 million.[38]WTEN was the next-to-last station to be sold, going toYoung Broadcasting for $38 million,[39] andWJRT would eventually becoming the final Knight Ridder station, to be sold toSJL Broadcasting for $39 million.[40]
| Media market | State | Station | Purchased | Sold | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | Alabama | WALA-TV | 1986 | 1989 | |
| Tucson | Arizona | KOLD-TV | 1986 | 1989 | |
| Miami | Florida | WCKT | 1956 | 1962 | [a][b] |
| Adams | Massachusetts | WCDC-TV | 1978 | 1989 | [c] |
| Flint | Michigan | WJRT-TV | 1978 | 1989 | |
| Albany | New York | WTEN | 1978 | 1989 | |
| Akron–Cleveland | Ohio | WAKR-TV | 1953 | 1977 | [d] |
| Oklahoma City | Oklahoma | KTVY | 1986 | 1989 | |
| Providence | Rhode Island | WPRI-TV | 1978 | 1989 | |
| Nashville | Tennessee | WKRN-TV | 1983 | 1989 | |
| Norfolk | Virginia | WTKR | 1981 | 1989 | |
| Superior | Wisconsin | WDSM-TV | 1954 | 1974 | [e] |
•Shock and Awe, 2018 film about a group of journalists at Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau who investigatethe reasons behind theBush Administration's2003 invasion of Iraq.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
