McClatchy to Resell 12 Papers It's Buying (incl. Philadelphia Inquirer)

[DeepModem Mom]

McClatchy to Resell 12 Papers It's Buying
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: March 14, 2006


There was both joy and despair across the Knight Ridder newspaper chain as employees learned that the McClatchy Company, which announced plans yesterday to acquire the company's 32 papers, would promptly sell 12 of them.

Those at the Knight Ridder papers being kept by McClatchy — including The Miami Herald and The Charlotte Observer — will be working for a family-controlled business known for disciplined management and solid journalistic standards.

"This is the absolute best outcome we could have hoped for," said Carol Rosenberg, a reporter at The Miami Herald, the largest paper to be retained. "It's a newspaper family with a tradition of journalism, not a corporate chop shop."

But those at the 12 papers to be sold — including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The San Jose Mercury News — now face continued uncertainty about who will own them, and the prospect of a less desirable owner than the one they had expected.

Rick Nichols, The Inquirer's food columnist and a 27-year veteran of the paper, said the staff was deflated, as if it "had been orphaned and told that its replacement parent didn't even want it."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/business/media/14paper.html?_r=1&oref=login

[gauguin57]

1. The Phila. Inky is a great paper ...

... I breathlessly await its fate :scared:

[salin]

5. Wonder what will happen to the Merc News

When I lived in the Bay Area I found it to be the best of the area papers.

[Gormy Cuss]

12. Current thinking is that MediaNews will be a serious bidder

for the Merc and the other two Northern California papers, the Contra Costa Times and the Monterey Herald. MediaNews owns the Oakland Trib among others.

Ridder of Knight-Ridder was apparently stunned that McClatchy categorized the Merc and CC Times as slow growth markets.

[newswolf56]

2. McClatchy is the most savagely anti-union newspaper monopoly...

in the United States, infamous for busting the Guild (and firing everyone who supports the Guild) at every paper they've ever bought. Not "disciplined management and solid journalistic standards" at all, just malicious, vindictive anti-unionism of a sort unseen in American newspapers since the 19th Century. And then after the union is broken, and all the union people are purged from the newsroom, nobody (but rats, back-stabbers and brown-nosers) ever gets a raise again -- just ask the (totally demoralized) employees at The News Tribune in Tacoma.

And that's not even addressing the community issue of trickle-down journalism: lots of fluff for the bourgeoisie, not one inch of type -- for example social-issues reporting -- of any use to working families, much less the poor, the elderly or the disabled.

[Hardrada]

3. This makes Gannett look good!!

[RagingInMiami]

6. No, Gannett sucks worse

Much worse.

[newswolf56]

8. Gannett is bad in a different way: suppressing stories on behalf of...

advertisers is Gannett's forté, while McClatchy is enough sophisticated those stories don't get assigned in the first place. Nor is Gannett as ruthlessly anti-union as McClatchy; McClatchy has an entire division in its management devoted exclusively to busting unions at new acquisitions (which you'll soon see go to work at all the Guild papers McClatchy just acquired), while Gannett prefers to buy papers that are already non-union.

Another difference: McClatchy imposes strict story quotas -- typically two major stories per day -- that force reporters to concentrate on the trivial and avoid anything complex or time consuming (which therefore totally prohibits investigative reporting or enterprise work). Gannett by comparison has a system (I don't know its present-day details) that demands each reporter write so many "income-producing" stories each month -- that is, stories in support of the advertising department. Even though these are typically public relations puffs -- garbage of no news value whatsoever -- in a Gannett paper they will be played as if they were of major importance.

Where the two papers are similar is that under both McClatchy and Gannett, newsroom personnel are reduced to production-line workers whose only purpose is to fill the spaces between the advertisements -- maximum production extracted at minimum cost, with workload doubled and pay scales slashed sometimes in half.

The Gannett staffers whose papers were bought by Knight-Ridder had a few wild moments of joy -- K-R still maintained some of the old standards that, once upon a time, made U.S. journalism the world standard. But now those same employees face nothing but misery -- and journalism is not a job but a way of life. Thus expect two or three suicides, lots of seven-day drunks, and more than a few resignations in despair.

[qw3rty]

4. McClatchy owns the Star Tribune

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is a really good paper. With a liberal editorial board. The St. Paul Pioneer Press was owned by Knight Ridder and I assume it is one of the papers that McClatchy will sell. The Pioneer Press is smaller, more conservative and it has a conservative editorial board.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Thanks for posting this info, qw3rty -- and welcome to DU!

[Dogmudgeon]

7. The Inqy has been hustling toward the Right ...

Soon it will be just like most of those other small-town right-wing rags, existing only to please the local Chamber of Commerce.

Glenn McCoy now replaces Tony Auth three days a week, and several right-wing editorialists have been hired.

So much for "the Libbrul Press".

--p!

[zbdent]

9. Akron Beacon Journal, also

rumor has it (on the front page of the business section of the ABJ) that the Canton (Ohio) Repository may buy it . . .

How bad is the C.R.?

[Eurobabe]

11. Mom says Philly Inq. now sucks, all local news

no more international anything. She's cancelled her subscription after 15 yrs. They need some real help.