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...