Knight Ridder Saga Continues for Business Reporters

By Kevin Sweeney
February 23, 2006 06:15 PM

The continuing saga of the potential sale of Knight Ridder has kept the company's own business reporters on top of their game.

According to speculation, a decision on whether it will put itself up for sale has been earmarked for the middle of March. At that time - or perhaps even later - we will learn whether initial shareholder pressure to sell has succeeded.

To keep the story in perspective, staff writer Jim Fuquay of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram compared the coverage of his newspaper to that of other companies in his region.

"The Star-Telegram employs about 1,500 people," Fuquay says. "We've run about 17 stories since this broke. I wrote a 70-inch story. There's no way we'd follow any other non-local company with 1,500 employees that closely. But I'd say it's justified as part of putting our own dealings out for the public to know."

Other reporters continue to run into resistance typical of upper management at any company. After being advised by his publisher not to listen in on a private conference call among Knight Ridder executives in November, Joe DiStefano of The Philadelphia Inquirer had to recently justify numbers related to circulation and revenue.

"It's a little weird to be calling our own bosses and bosses' bosses for comment, but they stonewall me just like many of the other companies on the beat," he says. "At one point, a company spokesman called to ask me why I was referring to our chain as the 'fourth-largest' when the company called itself the 'second-largest.'

"I explained that I had researched the question, and I knew that the chain was indeed No. 2 by daily circulation, but only No. 4 by revenues; the spokesman did not pursue the matter."

Though there might be heightened interest in the newsroom, some papers have tried to put themselves behind the average reader's eyes. To accomplish this at the Inquirer, DiStefano and his colleagues simply separate their own interest from that of the local readership.

Some larger trends within the entire newspaper sector have come into focus as well. With the industry under circulation and advertising pressures, rumors of a Knight Ridder sale have deepened some concerns.

"Most sobering has been the notion that media companies don't want to put more money into newspapers," Fuquay observes. "The fact that the stock is far from its high, to me, is screaming that there's plenty of doubt about this deal. I've found it interesting that the basic options, and the odds on which one is most likely, haven't changed much since the story broke.

"I assume that as the stock price remains relatively low, it will become more likely that the shareholders will accept some sort of short-time appeasement."

As far as reader feedback is concerned, DiStefano says that the general public is not voicing much opinion about the potential sale. There has, however, been interest from other groups.

"On my own beat (financial institutions), there has been a lot of interested speculation as to what the papers are worth, who the likely buyers are and what new management might do differently," DiStefano says. "That's been useful to me in a general way, but I still don't know what's going to happen, or when."

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