HA ha...
and the RATS take another one in the...
Posted on 03/19/2006 7:47:39 AM PST by abb
ONLY a handful of days have passed since he announced the deal to sell Knight Ridder, but P. Anthony Ridder, the company's chairman and chief executive, already has ghosts to contend with. The biggest, of course, is the pending disappearance of the company his great-grandfather, Herman, founded in 1892 — Ridder Publications, which merged in 1974 with Knight Newspapers to create what has for much of recent memory been the nation's second-largest newspaper group, with 32 dailies.
But he also has to wrestle with the fact — apparently unknown to him until the deal was sealed — that the buyer, the McClatchy Company, plans to turn around and sell 12 of Knight Ridder's biggest papers, representing nearly half its $3 billion in annual revenue. "It's terrible," Mr. Ridder said after the deal was announced. "The whole thing."
Then why did he do it? Mr. Ridder's heartfelt contention is that he was boxed into a corner, and he extracted the best outcome from a tough situation. With its stock lagging and its biggest shareholder, Private Capital Management, agitating for change since last fall, Mr. Ridder had few options.
He personally owns only 1.9 percent of the company's shares, and Knight Ridder isn't governed by the kind of dual-tier share structure that keeps voting control in the hands of a founding family and is quite common in the media industry. (One example is the arrangement at The New York Times Company.) An argument can be made, and has been, that Mr. Ridder struck a good deal with a preferred acquirer. But it doesn't quite add up. The end of Knight Ridder looks like nothing so much as a stunning capitulation in a period when every bean-counting fund manager can fancy himself an activist and media companies are in the investment dog house.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So they are going to break up the empire and then what? Will local companies buy them up, will they be put into the hands of the same socialists who have run the company into the ground until they completely disappear? Or will they finally get into the hands of people who are smart enough to report on just the facts and leave the opinions to the opinion pages?
Instead of "Before Its Time" it should have been titled: "Living On Borrowed Time".
Who are the 12 Slate and Chisels being dumped?
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Wake up America!
Your newspapers are closing!
Don't you care? Don't you care that the news you get in the paper is old by the time it printed? Don't you care that they have taught you how to think for over 100 years?
And this is how you treat them. Remember "send me the pictures and I'll creat the war?" Where is that going to come from in the future?
Why... you people will have to think for your selves!!!! Is that what you want?? GOD HELP US! Ordinary people thinking for themselves without being nuanced once!
(Cue theme - 'Its the end of the world as we knowit..')
I don't understand why this is a terrible thing. Who cares if those papers have a different owner?
I recall with what joy, delight and persistence Knight-Ridder helped Moral Majority leader destroy the PTL people and ministry.
"All things work together for good to them that love the Lord and are the called according to His purpose."
We prayed then that God would bring to account those who had made themselves god in the circumstances. May that purpose be seen through to the end that God desires.
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