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By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON, ALLISON HOPE WEINER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM The New York Post is cooperating with a federal investigation into whether a longtime contributor for the Page Six gossip column — the avidly read daily log of wrongdoing, double-dealing and sexual indiscretions by celebrities both minor and major — tried to extort money from a California billionaire, according to a spokesman for the newspaper. Several people involved in the investigation said the reporter, Jared Paul Stern, had been captured on a video recording demanding a $100,000 payment and a monthly stipend of $10,000 from Ronald W. Burkle in return...

Metro columnist Jim DeFede said he taped a phone conversation with Art Teele hours before the politician shot himself. Executives said they fired DeFede because taping is illegal without consent. The Herald fired columnist Jim DeFede Wednesday because he tape-recorded a phone conversation with Arthur E. Teele Jr. without his knowledge. Teele had killed himself in The Herald's lobby earlier in the day without ever knowing that the columnist recorded their conversation. Both Publisher Jesús Díaz Jr. and Executive Editor Tom Fiedler said they fired the popular Metro writer because it is illegal for anyone to tape a conversation with...

The McClatchy Co. reported Thursday that it incurred a $1.43 billion after-tax loss on the fourth quarter of 2007 -- after taking yet another huge goodwill impairment charge. McClatchy said its loss from continuing operations of $17.42 per share -- which compares to a $3.40 per-share loss in the same period in 2006 -- includes a non-cash after-tax impairment charge related to goodwill and flagging newspaper mastheads of $1.47 billion. The impairment charge on goodwill and other non-tangible assets -- reflecting a loss in the fair market value of the nation's third-largest newspaper chain -- follows a goodwill write-down of...

WHEN P. Anthony Ridder met with Wall Street analysts in June last year for a routine financial review, he was the chief executive of the nation’s second-largest newspaper company. And he could not have sounded more upbeat about the prospects for his corporate namesake, Knight Ridder. snip Today, many people in the newspaper industry are still scratching their heads over how and why a company with relatively high profit margins and a trophy case of 85 Pulitzer Prizes allowed itself to be wiped off the media landscape. snip Whether the former Knight Ridder papers will be better off, financially and...

NEW YORK Knight Ridder executives are busy packing up their offices today after shareholders officially approved the McClatchy acquisition during an emotional annual meeting on Monday. By about 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, the company will no longer exist, confirmed Polk Laffoon, Knight Ridder’s vice president of corporate relations. Employees at Knight Ridder headquarters will get their final paycheck today as they move out of the building located in downtown San Jose. “Everybody has to clear out,” Laffoon said. Only Tony Ridder, chairman and CEO of Knight Ridder, and an administrative assistant will maintain an office in the building for...

Allentown, Pa. -- The smallest city in United States with two independent, paid daily newspapers will stay that way, at least for now. McClatchy Co. said Monday it has found a buyer for the last of the Knight Ridder Inc. papers it planned to divest, agreeing to sell the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. to a consortium of private investors. Richard L. Connor, who was editor and publisher of the Times Leader during a crippling newspaper strike almost three decades ago, plans to purchase the newspaper in conjunction with a group of local investors and HM Capital Partners LLC, a...

Snip........ Knight Ridder's demise may foreshadow more sobering times ahead for newspapers if advertising continues its shift to the Internet, intensifying pressure on publishers to cut costs to satisfy investors who continue to demand higher profits despite the industry's eroding revenue and readership. Those tensions buried San Jose-based Knight Ridder, which spent much of the past decade fruitlessly trying to please Wall Street. Knight Ridder's papers have a combined daily circulation of 8.1 million, down from 8.5 million five years ago. The relentless pursuit of more profit became an uphill battle as the company tried to offset its diminishing revenue...

Chandler family may actively pursue change in management (Crain’s) — Chandler Trusts, the second-largest holder of Tribune Co. stock, is calling for an independent management review after questioning the leadership abilities of the media conglomerate’s executive team. In a letter filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Chandler family strongly recommended that the Tribune’s board of directors appoint an independent committee to evaluate management and to “promptly execute alternatives to restore and enhance stockholder value.” The Chandler family is also calling for the media company to spinoff its broadcasting properties, among other actions. Related story: Chandler family calls...

AKRON, Ohio Jun 7, 2006 (AP)— McClatchy Co. said Wednesday that it has reached agreements to sell five of the six remaining Knight Ridder newspapers it plans to divest for about $450 million. The newspapers are the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio; the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota; Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota; The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel in Indiana and the American News in Aberdeen, S.D. That leaves the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., remaining to be sold. McClatchy has already announced the sale of six other larger newspapers owned by Knight Ridder Inc., including The Philadelphia Inquirer. McClatchy...

Yucaipa is headed by supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, a close friend of former President Clinton. He was recruited by the Guild because of his reputation as a union-friendly boss. Bidding continues for papers McClatchy chain plans to sell... Representatives of the Yucaipa Cos. could visit the Times Leader next week as the deadline looms to submit final bids for six so-called orphan Knight Ridder newspapers. Yucaipa, a California private equity firm, has joined with The Newspaper Guild, a journalists’ union, in an attempt to execute a “worker-friendly” purchase of the papers, including the Times Leader. The McClatchy Co., which is...

Newspaper circulation fell 2.6 percent in the six-month period ending in March, according to data released Monday, as the industry continued to struggle with competition from other media outlets and the Internet. The decline in average paid weekday circulation was about the same as the previous time newspapers reported six-month circulation figures for the period ending last September, according to the Newspaper Association of America, a trade group. The NAA reported that average paid circulation at Sunday newspapers fell 3.1 percent versus the same period a year ago, also a comparable decline with the last time circulation figures were reported....

Facing shareholder dissent and getting flak for bloated executive pay deals, The New York Times is frantically searching for crisis p.r. experts as the company gears up for a public battle over the future of the newspaper giant. Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. and other top management have been criticized for putting off the concerns of Morgan Stanley portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry and for a share price that's plummeted 50 percent since 2002. Soon after Morgan's attack last week on The Times, the publisher's spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, was phoning Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon seeking advice, sources familiar with the...

The McClatchy Co. announced an agreement to sell the Times and three other newspapers for $1 billion to MediaNews Group Inc. and Hearst Corp. Denver-based MediaNews, publisher of the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers, will purchase the Times and San Jose Mercury News. New York City-based Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, will buy the Monterey Herald and St. Paul Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn. Hearst has agreed to "contribute" the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Monterey Herald to MediaNews in return for an equity investment in MediaNews assets outside of the Bay Area. If the...

S&P plans to rate McClatchy's assumed debt "BBB" Mon Apr 24, 2006 1:15 PM ET NEW YORK, April 24 (Reuters) - A rating on the senior unsecured debt assumed by McClatchy Co. through the acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc. will be lowered by Standard and Poor's following the close of the buyout, the rating agency said on Monday. S&P said it will rate the senior unsecured debt "BBB," the second-lowest investment grade rating. "This announcement follows a clarification to the terms of McClatchy's planned $3.75 billion senior credit facilities, which will be used to help fund the acquisition of Knight...

NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service on Thursday cut both Knight Ridder Inc. (KRI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and McClatchy Co. (MNI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to junk status, citing McClatchy's acquisition of its bigger rival newspaper publisher. In mid-March, No. 9 U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy said it would buy Knight-Ridder Inc. for $4.5 billion to become the second-largest U.S. newspaper chain. Downgrades, particularly to junk, tend to raise a company's borrowing costs. Moody's cut both Knight Ridder and McClatchy's bond ratings to the top junk level of "Ba1" from the bottom investment-grade rating of "Baa3." The new combined...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Newspaper companies will be in focus as earnings season begins next week -- including McClatchy Co., which last month reached an agreement to acquire Knight Ridder Inc. for $6.5 billion -- as analysts will again look for indications that the industry's long slump is abating. Newspapers face a number of serious challenges. One is an uneven advertising environment, which, of course, plagues the wider media sector. For newspapers, there has been ongoing weakness in classified automotive ads and in many national categories, including technology, movies, wireless and transportation. A shift toward online news consumption has hurt circulation...

NEW YORK A union representing newspaper workers complained Friday that it was not receiving full access to financial information from The McClatchy Co. that it needs to make a bid on 12 newspapers that McClatchy wants to sell. McClatchy said earlier this month that it intended to sell the papers, which include The Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News, as part of its deal to acquire Knight Ridder Inc., the nation's second-largest newspaper company. McClatchy intends to keep the other 20 papers owned by Knight Ridder. The Newspaper Guild-CWA said it was told by McClatchy that the union...

The Newspaper Guild said Friday that its private equity partner, Yucaipa Companies, hasn't been given financial information it wants in order to refine a bid for 12 Knight Ridder newspapers being sold by McClatchy. The Guild said competitors who earlier entered the bidding for all of Knight Ridder have seen information that others interested in just the 12 papers have not. Knight Ridder agreed to be purchased by McClatchy in a $4.5 billion deal announced March 13. McClatchy then said it was selling 12 of Knight Ridder's 32 daily newspapers, including the Mercury News. Yucaipa said it will submit a...

Faces In The News: Billionaire Burkle To Rescue McClatchy Papers? Greg Levine, 03.24.06, 12:17 PM ET New York - "Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." That line from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I probably parallels the emotions running through Tony Ridder over this fortnight. On March 13, we reported that the chief executive of Knight Ridder was putting his newspaper company on the block, after shareholder pressure. No sooner did the news break that the firm would be bought by McClatchy, than a new and sobering development was made public. The publisher's half-eponymous CEO--and scion of...

Now that the Dubai Ports deal is apparently down the drain because of irate protests from the public and Congress, the United Arab Emirates company is taking a new tack. The San Francisco Examiner recently carried a column by P.J. Corkery that told how the UAE ,through its government-controlled Dubai Investment Group, is trying to buy the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain after failing to acquire the Albertson’s grocery chain. Corkery outlined who is the front man in this deal, and who is doing the lobbying and buying for Dubai. This is what he wrote: “The Yank partner of the Dubai Investment...