Knight Ridder
 | |
 The Knight Ridder building in San Jose, California. | |
| Industry | Mass media |
|---|---|
| Fate | Purchased by The McClatchy Company |
| Successor | The McClatchy Company |
| Founded | July 11, 1974 (1974-07-11) |
| Founder | John S. Knight Herman Ridder |
| Defunct | June 27, 2006 (2006-06-27) (31 years, 351 days) |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California United States |
| Products | Newspapers |
Knight Ridder /ˈrɪdər/ (from Dutch: ridder, knight) 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 newspapers sold. Its headquarters were located in San Jose, California.[1]
Contents
1 History
1.1 Origins
1.2 At its peak
1.3 Purchase by McClatchy
2 List of newspapers
3 Knight Ridder-owned companies
4 Knight Ridder-owned television stations
5 Media
6 Notable people
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
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 New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, 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.[2]
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.[3]
In 1997 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.[4]
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.[5] 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.[6]
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.[7]
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 (Miami, Florida), 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
Starkville Daily News (Starkville, Mississippi), 1986–1987
Centre Daily Times (State College, Pennsylvania), 1979–2006
Tallahassee Democrat (Tallahassee, Florida), 1965–2005
Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, California), 1995–2006
The Daily Times-Leader (West Point, Mississippi), 1986–1987
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[8]
- 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:[9] 2004–2006. RealCities was a portal/hub website for Knight-Ridder group. It was absorbed with The McClatchy Company into McClatchy Interactive[10] and sold to Chicago-based Centro[11] in 2008.
Knight Ridder-owned television stations
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.
In 1977, Knight Ridder entered broadcasting with the acquisition of 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). 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 (which purchased the newspaper in 1986) could not keep due to Federal 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 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.
Notes:
- (**) - 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.
City of license / Market | Station | Channel TV (RF) | Years owned | Current ownership status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Mobile, Alabama - Pensacola, Florida | WALA-TV | 10 (9) | 1986–1989 | Fox affiliate owned by Meredith Corporation |
Tucson, Arizona | KOLD-TV | 13 (32) | 1986–1989 | CBS affiliate owned by Gray Television |
Miami, Florida | WCKT ** | 7 (7) | 1956–1962 | Fox affiliate, WSVN, owned by Sunbeam Television |
Flint, Michigan | WJRT-TV | 12 (12) | 1978–1989 | ABC affiliate owned by Gray Television |
Albany, New York | WTEN | 10 (26) | 1978–1989 | ABC affiliate owned by Nexstar Media Group |
Adams, Massachusetts | WCDC-TV (satellite of WTEN) | 19 (36) | 1978–1989 | defunct; License cancelled in 2018. |
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | KTVY | 4 (27) | 1986–1989 | NBC affiliate, KFOR-TV, owned by Tribune Broadcasting |
Providence, Rhode Island | WPRI-TV | 12 (13) | 1978–1989 | CBS affiliate owned by Nexstar Media Group |
Nashville, Tennessee | WKRN-TV | 2 (27) | 1983–1989 | ABC affiliate owned by Nexstar Media Group |
Norfolk, Virginia | WTKR | 3 (40) | 1981–1989 | CBS affiliate owned by Dreamcatcher Broadcasting, LLC (operated through a SSA by Tribune Broadcasting) |
Superior, Wisconsin - Duluth, Minnesota | WDSM-TV ++ | 6 (19) | 1954–1974 | NBC affiliate, KBJR-TV, owned by Quincy Media |
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
- Bernard J. Ridder
- Robert Ridder
References
^ "Where We Are." Knight Ridder. April 28, 2005. Retrieved on August 28, 2012. "Knight Ridder 50 W. San Fernando St. San Jose, CA 95113" and "Knight Ridder Digital 35 South Market Street San Jose, CA 95113-2302"
^ "Viewtron Remembered Roundtable". Archived from the original on 2012-10-20. Retrieved 2012-10-19..mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"""""""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/12px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}
^ "Knight-Ridder Puts 8 TV Stations on Block to Reduce $929-Million Debt". Los Angeles Times. AP. October 4, 1988. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
^ The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/business/yourmoney/27knight.htm?pagewanted=all. Missing or empty|title=(help)
^ "mcclatchy.com". Archived from the original on 2006-04-09. Retrieved 2006-04-11.
^ Seelye, Katharine Q.; Sorkin, Andrew Ross (2006-03-13). "Newspaper Chain Agrees to a Sale for $4.5 Billion". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-17.
^ medianewsgroup.com Archived 2006-05-26 at the Wayback Machine
^ "infotoday.com". infotoday.com. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
^ "RealCities Network". Archived from the original on 2012-08-13. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
^ "McClatchy Interactive". Archived from the original on 2012-08-03. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
^ "Centro". Centro. 2018-01-18. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
Further reading
Merritt, Davis (2005). Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk. New York: Amacom. ISBN 0814408540.
External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Knight Ridder. |
Knight Ridder - Chronology (Archive)- Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
