Editorials

The buzz this week in journalistic circles has been all about the Knight Ridder corporation selling itself off to the McClatchy organization. Last week’s panic in the press—fears that the chain would fall into the wrong hands—was momentarily superseded by euphoria in “responsible” quarters, notably the New York Times, because of the wholesome reputation for solid journalism that McClatchy’s California flagships have nourished over the years.  

This just in: It’s not your grandfather’s McClatchy anymore. Old C.K. McClatchy, the legendary stiff-necked publisher of the Bee papers in the Valley, died in 1989, and Gary Pruitt, the current publisher, is a smiley blond lawyer-turned-executive described by Editor and Publisher as specializing in “iron-cupcake diplomacy.” 

The three names in this transaction, Knight, Ridder and McClatchy, all carry connotations of a period when newspaper journalism was more than a corporate money-making enterprise. The original Knights, the Ridders and the McClatchys all managed their businesses—and they were, of course, businesses, even then—in such a way as to add luster to the family name as well as gold to the bottom line. Occasionally some family member even took a modest flier into the public policy leadership arena. John S. Knight, though a registered Republican, was one of the earliest voices calling for withdrawal from Vietnam in the ‘60s.  

Now we’re being treated to the unseemly spectacle of K-R publisher Tony Ridder saying he’s shocked, shocked, that McClatchy’s corporate masters are going to unload some of what they’ve bought as fast as they can. Well, anyone who’s read Carl Hiassen’s hilarious 2002 crime novel Basket Case isn’t a bit surprised. Catty rumors in Blogsville suggest that the character Race Maggard III, the owner of the newspaper where the protagonist worked in the book, was a send-up of Tony Ridder. Here’s one of Hiassen’s many sharp-edged depictions: 

Maggard-Feist is a publicly traded company that owns 27 dailies around the country. The chairman and CEO, young Race Maggard III, believes newspapers can prosper handsomely without practicing distinguished journalism, as distinguished journalism tends to cost money. Race Maggard III believes the easiest way to boost a newspaper’s profits is to cut back on the actual gathering of news. 

In 2003 Geneva Oberholser, a columnist for the journalism think-tank Poynter Institute, lambasted Knight Ridder’s “executive incentive” plan: “Knight Ridder executives could hardly send a clearer message about what matters most than this plan to ‘motivate and reward executives for achieving total shareholder return equal to or greater than the other companies in the S&P Publishing/Newspaper Index,’ as the company’s proxy statement put it.” At that point, Knight Ridder’s return to shareholders, both stock-price gains and dividends, was 25 percent, according to a story in the chain’s San Jose Mercury News. Oberholser’s comment: “If the mantra used to be: ‘We’ve got to be a strong business in order to do strong journalism,’ it now seems quite openly to have become: ‘We’ve got to make higher profits than all the others.’”  

And when the profits went down a bit this year, to just above 19 percent, the Wall Street investors got even greedier, resulting finally in last week’s firesale. Carl Hiassen’s book predicted the post-sale results, so they should have come as no shock to anyone, especially Ridder, who’d done the same thing himself in the past:  

When a newspaper is purchased by a chain such as Maggard-Feist, the first order of business is to assure worried employees that their jobs are safe, and that no drastic changes are planned. The second order of business is to attack the paper’s payroll with a rusty cleaver, and start shoving people out the door.  

Because newspaper companies promote the myth that they’re more sensitive and socially responsible than the rest of corporate America, elaborate efforts are made to avoid the appearance of a bloodbath. Mass firings are discouraged in favor of strong-armed buyout packages and accelerated attrition. 

And it’s not just McClatchy-Knight-Ridder-Maggard-Feist that’s guilty of doing business like this. Ask any current or recently discharged staffer at the San Francisco Chronicle (bought by Hearst) or the Los Angeles Times (bought by the Chicago Tribune). Or for that matter at the Village Voice (bought by New Times, Inc.) 

A widely-quoted quip described the acquisition as a dolphin swallowing a whale. From the perspective of a small bottom-feeding family-owned newspaper, however, the action among the big players looks a lot more like Shark v. Shark. It’s not clear what, if anything, is to supposed to become of old-time public service journalism, but we’re pretty sure that, wearing our investor hats, we’d settle for a lot less than 19 percent profit in this venture.  

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