GO SIMON
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Posted on 10/10/2002 9:55:52 PM PDT by HAL9000
Bernard H. "Bernie" Ridder Jr., a former Pioneer Press publisher who helped to create the nation's second-largest newspaper group and helped to bring the Vikings football team to Minnesota, died Thursday. He was 85.He was a civic activist during his years in St. Paul and in Duluth, Minn., and a key architect of the merger of the Knight and Ridder newspaper groups, which today operate 32 daily papers with a combined circulation of nearly 4 million.
Son P. Anthony "Tony" Ridder, now chairman and CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based Knight Ridder, said his father preached the need "to do the right thing," a credo that governed family life as well as the many business dealings his father had.
Ridder was born and grew up in New York City, where the family newspaper business started more than 125 years ago, but he made his home in St. Paul since 1958, when he was named publisher of the St. Paul newspapers, the Pioneer Press and Dispatch.
"We've always considered St. Paul the family home,'' said his son Peter, publisher of Knight Ridder's Charlotte Observer in North Carolina.
In later years, Ridder and his wife, Jane, also maintained a home in Ocean Ridge, Fla., but "if it weren't for the cold, he would have spent all this time in St. Paul. He felt most comfortable and had lots of friends there,'' Peter said.
Even though long retired from the business, Ridder came almost daily to an office he kept in the Pioneer Press Building when he was in St. Paul. And despite his many years in the Midwest, Ridder's soft voice carried overtones of his East Coast and Ivy League roots.
DEEP SENSE OF VALUES
"The only discussion I remember with Dad about going into the family business was about me having to work hard and do well or I would not stay in my position,'' said Tony Ridder. "I don't know if you could call that encouragement, but it was a standard he set. He was a very no-nonsense person at the time.''
Tony Ridder said there were some members of the extended Ridder family who did not take the business as seriously as his father. Tony said the family could be considered privileged, but there was an ethic that came from his father that everyone should work hard.
"Families of many of our friends bought their children cars. My first car was after I got married,'' Tony said. "He felt we would better appreciate things if we worked for them, if they did not come too easily.''
Tony said his father had a deep sense of what was ethical and what was not. "He was adamant that his sportswriters not accept free travel (once a common practice) from teams they covered. It would have been unethical.''
Peter Ridder said that if "there is one thing he instilled in me, it was to be honest. If you don't know the answer, say so.''
Peter, who was publisher in St. Paul for 5½ years before moving to Charlotte in 1997, said he did not intend to go into the newspaper business, and his father "did not discourage me or encourage me to, but he was always supportive of the (career) decisions I made.''
At 6 feet 5 inches, Ridder was very athletic. While a student at Princeton University, he was twice runner-up in the national intercollegiate squash championships. But golf was his life sport. He was a member of several clubs and, for a time, served on the executive committee of the U.S. Golf Association. He also served on the Tournament Policy Committee for the Professional Golfers Association Tour. In 1980, he was selected a captain at Jack Nicklaus' golf club, Muirfield in Dublin, Ohio, for his contribution to and interest in the game.
The family story is that Ridder was in Nantucket, Mass., in 1938 to play in a golf tournament and met Jane Delano, a niece of then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were married about six months later, when Ridder was headed to Aberdeen, S.D., for a job at a Ridder family newspaper.
Tony Ridder said he once checked the newspaper file at the Detroit News, where he was a summer intern, to see what was in the library about his father.
"There was only a long story about how he was marrying FDR's niece. Most of the story was about her,'' he recalled with humor, noting that his gracious, easy-to-like mother was often an ambassador for his father.
FAMILY NEWSPAPER LEGACY
The Ridder newspapers date to 1892, when Herman Ridder bought the German-language newspaper Die Staats-Zeitung of New York. After his death in 1916, Die Staats-Zeitung went to his three sons, Bernard H. Sr., Joseph and Victor. The brothers expanded the firm, buying newspapers in St. Paul (in 1927), Duluth, Grand Forks, N.D., Aberdeen and Long Island, N.Y.
Bernard Jr. went to work for the family's New York Journal of Commerce after graduating from Princeton in 1938, where his classmates remember his ability to excel in class without seeming to study hard. After a brief stint there, he went to Aberdeen.
"He told of working as an ad salesman for $15 a week in South Dakota and going out with circulation people to collect. They'd often get paid with produce — even had a special cage on the car for chickens and eggs,'' said John Finnegan, retired executive editor and senior vice president of the Pioneer Press. "He said they had an accident one day, and it was feathers everywhere and a two-block-long omelet.''
Finnegan, who is writing a book on the Ridder family, said that, as publisher, Ridder did not meddle in news coverage or editorial policies. Ridder's idea of good management was to get the best people he could in positions where he wanted them and let them do their jobs.
Ridder was always well informed and knowledgeable about what was happening, Finnegan said. "You never tried to con him or misdirect him.''
When Ridder would be away from St. Paul for any length of time, one of the first things he would do on returning was get a briefing about the politics and news of Minnesota and the city, Finnegan said. "Like any good journalist, he loved to know what was going on, especially behind the scenes.''
VETERAN, CIVIC ACTIVIST
Ridder joined the Navy in 1942 and spent most of World War II aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill as a gunnery officer. He was in charge of the radar, then a new technology, aboard the ship. As an ensign and then lieutenant, he earned nine battle stars from the carrier's action throughout the Pacific Ocean.
After the war, he served as advertising director of the Duluth Herald and Duluth News Tribune (the papers merged in 1982) and was named publisher in 1952. He was then named publisher in 1958 of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and St. Paul Dispatch (which merged in 1985). He held publisher positions in both cities until 1971 and was president and CEO of Ridder Publications when it merged with the Knight group in 1974. He was on the board of the new firm and was chairman of the board from 1979 to 1982.
Before the merger, Ridder was instrumental in the expansion of the Ridder group into California and several other Western states, Finnegan said. He also was instrumental in taking the family-held corporation public with its stock in 1969.
While publisher, Ridder took an active part in civic affairs. In Duluth, he served on the city's Housing and Redevelopment Authority. In St. Paul, he put together a finance package to bring a Hilton Hotel — now the Radisson Riverfront — to Kellogg Boulevard to bolster the city's economy.
In the late 1960s, he served on the University of Minnesota Foundation board and was its president. He was also a director of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and the Greater St. Paul Area United Fund and Council.
On the business side, he served as a director of the Associated Press from 1954 to 1964 and also was an AP vice president. He was a director for the Bureau of Advertising, the American Newspaper Association and the Great Lakes Forest Product Ltd. of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Because of his reputation for fairness, on occasion he mediated disputes between unions and management at other newspapers.
HELPED LAND VIKINGS
Ridder's enthusiasm for sports got the company involved as one of the original five owners of the Minnesota Vikings who bought a franchise from the National Football League in 1961 for $600,000. The company owned about a third of the stock of the team, and Ridder served as chairman of the team's board from 1961 to 1977, when its interest in the team was sold.
Although divested of financial interest, Ridder maintained a lifelong interest in how the team was doing, according to Tom Hoak of Edina, a friend of Ridder's since they met playing golf in Duluth in 1946.
"When the Vikings played on television, we'd talk (by telephone) nine, 10 times a game,'' said Hoak. "He was keenly interested and excitable about the games. He always had a prejudice against rookie quarterbacks.''
Hoak and his wife, Mary, became close friends with the Ridders. Eventually, the couples traveled together extensively throughout the world and spent time together at winter homes in Florida.
Leo Spooner, another golfing buddy and close friend from Ridder's Duluth days, said Ridder was compassionate, honest and "always willing to listen to the other side of a story. He had the financial clout and power to do what he wanted, but he always told me that you have to respect the people who work for you.''
Spooner said that one time when a Duluth newspaper carrier fell off a pier and drowned, Ridder, "from his own pocket, paid for the funeral and all. From a distance, he might look stiff and old money, but he had a big heart of gold.''
Spooner said Ridder helped him get started in his men's clothing business.
KEY ROLE IN MERGER
The merger of the Knight and Ridder groups appears to have been one of Ridder's ideas. According to Finnegan, Ridder began looking for possible corporate partners in the early 1970s.
"The Ridders knew they had to grow, but the chain did not have an internal structure to handle corporate-wide operations. It would have been expensive to build one,'' Finnegan said.
In early 1974, Ridder was approached by Lee Hills of Knight Newspapers and, within several months, the merger of the two newspaper groups was finalized. Ridder became a vice chairman of the board of the new company and was named chairman in 1979.
As a result of the merger, Ridder's company sold its stock in the Vikings and its share of several television and radio stations, including WCCO in the Twin Cities.
In a 1982 interview, Ridder called the merger a good geographical fit. Most of the Ridder properties were in the West and Midwest, and most of the Knight properties were in the East.
Alvah Chapman, of Miami, was president of Knight Newspapers at the time of the merger and in a recent interview also called the move a good economic fit.
"We had a 23 percent growth in the first 15 years after the merger,'' said Chapman, who became chief operating officer and chairman of Knight Ridder, retiring in 1989.
The merger, he said, succeeded because Ridder made it succeed. In any such venture, Chapman said, there is always the danger of a political carry-over — "having 'former Knight' or 'former Ridder' tacked on to everyone. Bernie made it clear it was going to be 'Knight Ridder.' He made it stick and led by example.''
Ridder retired as chairman of the Knight Ridder board in 1982 but was a member until 1994.
Ridder is survived by his wife, Jane, of California and Florida; daughters Laura Evans of Grosse Pointe, Mich., and Robin Lee and Jill Delano Ridder, both of Healdsburg, Calif.; sons P. Anthony of Woodside, Calif.; Peter B. of Charlotte, N.C.; nine grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren.
He is also survived by a brother, Daniel of Los Angeles. Another brother, Joseph B. Ridder, former general manager of the Pioneer Press and Dispatch and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News from 1952 to 1977, died in 1989.
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