Knight Ridder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Not to be confused with Knight Rider (disambiguation) or Night Rider (disambiguation).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

The Knight Ridder building in downtown San Jose, California.

Knight Ridder (pronounced /ˈrɪdər/) was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company on June 27, 2006, it was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspapers.

Contents [show] 1 History 2 List of newspapers 3 Knight Ridder-owned companies 4 Knight Ridder-owned television stations 5 Trivia 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

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 German language Staats-Zeitung newspaper in 1892. As anti-German sentiment increased between the two world wars, Ridder successfully transitioned into English language publishing by acquiring the Journal of Commerce in 1926.
Both companies went public in 1969 and merged in 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 in technology. It was the first newspaper publisher to experiment with videotex when it launched its Viewtron system in 1982.
In 1997 it bought four newspapers from the Disney Co. (Kansas City Star, Ft. Worth Star Telegram, Belleville(Ill) News-Democrat and (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.) Times-Leader) for $1.65 billion. It was, at the time, the most expensive newspaper acquisition in the history of the newspaper business.
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.
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 to immediately resell twelve of these papers. [1]
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. [2]

[edit] List of newspapers

Daily newspapers owned by Knight Ridder and its predecessors included:

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 Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado), 1969–1997 The Herald (Bradenton) (Bradenton, Florida), 1973–2006 The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho), 2005–2006 Chicago Daily News (Chicago, Illinois), 1944–1959 The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina), 1955–2006 The State (Columbia, South Carolina), 1986–2006 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Georgia), 1973–2006 Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, California), 1995–2006 Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan), 1940–2005 Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minnesota), 1936–2006 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 The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida), 1937–2006 El Nuevo Herald (Miami, Florida), 1977–2006 Monterey County Herald (Monterey, California), 1997–2006 The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina), 1986–2006 The News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 1980–2006 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 Saint 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 The Daily Times-Leader (West Point, Mississippi), 1986–1987 The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kansas), 1973–2006 The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), 1997–2006

[edit] 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 Buys MoneyCentre and renames it KRFI?? -1996, Acquired by Global Financial trading as Bridge Data

[edit] 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. (Interestingly, 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.

Current DMA#	Market	Station	Years Owned	Current Affiliation/Owner
16.	Miami, Florida	WCKT 7 (now WSVN)	1956-62 **	Fox affiliate owned by Sunbeam Television
30.	Nashville, Tennessee	WKRN-TV 2	1983-89	ABC affiliate owned by Young Broadcasting
42.	Norfolk, Virginia	WTKR 3	1981-89	CBS affiliate owned by Local TV
45.	Oklahoma City, Oklahoma	KTVY 4 (now KFOR-TV)	1986-89	NBC affiliate owned by Local TV
52.	Providence, Rhode Island	WPRI-TV 12	1977-89	CBS affiliate owned by LIN Television
56.	Albany, New York	WTEN 10	1977-89	ABC affiliate owned by Young Broadcasting
	Adams, Massachusetts	WCDC 19 (satellite of WTEN)	1977-89	ABC affiliate owned by Young Broadcasting
61.	Mobile, Alabama - Pensacola, Florida	WALA-TV 10	1986-89	Fox affiliate owned by LIN Television
66.	Flint, Michigan	WJRT-TV 12	1977-89	ABC owned-and-operated (O&O)
68.	Tucson, Arizona	KOLD-TV 13	1986-89	CBS affiliate owned by Raycom Media
138.	Superior, Wisconsin - Duluth, Minnesota	WDSM-TV 6 (now KBJR-TV)	1954-74 ++	NBC affiliate owned by Granite Broadcasting

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.

[edit] Trivia

• "Ridder" is Dutch for "Knight."

• Contrary to popular belief, the company had nothing to do with the television series Knight Rider.

[edit] References

• Seelye, Katharine Q.; Andrew Ross Sorkin (2006-03-12). "Knight Ridder Newspaper Chain Agrees to Sale" (Fee). The New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50817FB3B550C718DDDAA0894DE404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fS%2fSorkin%2c%20Andrew%20Ross. 

[edit] External links

• Media related to Knight Ridder at Wikimedia Commons
• Knight Ridder corporate website
• Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder"

Categories: Companies based in San Jose, California | Companies established in 1933 | Companies disestablished in 2006 | Knight Ridder | Financial data vendors