Word: ridder
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bulletin's biggest problem was the morning Inquirer. Acquired by the Knight-Ridder chain in 1970, the Inquirer was for several years after that on the verge of extinction. At its low point in 1975 the paper lost millions as circulation dipped to 401,000. Had the Bulletin started a morning edition then, the Inquirer might have folded. But instead the Bulletin stood pat while the Inquirer built a national reputation under Executive Editor Gene Roberts. Winning six consecutive Pulitzer Prizes, the Inquirer outfoxed, outspent and outclassed its rival. Roberts even managed to wrest away Doonesbury, the popular comic...
DIED. John Knight, 86, tough, acerbic newspaperman who, as the founder and longtime editor of the Knight-Ridder group, led its expansion into one of the largest newspaper chains in the country; of a heart attack; in Akron. A former sportswriter and managing editor at the Akron Beacon Journal, Knight inherited the paper from his father in 1933 and used it as a base to build a thriving publishing empire that today includes four television stations and 34 daily newspapers with a combined weekly circulation of 25 million (among them: the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Charlotte Observer...
...groups have an energetic defender in Neuharth, a wiry (5 ft. 7 in., 150 lbs.) imp with an athletic walk, a lopsided grin and a supremely self-confident air. Born and raised in South Dakota, he made a name for himself at the Miami Herald, a Knight (now Knight-Ridder) paper, where he rose from reporter to assistant managing editor in four years, and later at Knight's Detroit Free Press. Neuharth joined Gannett in 1963 and was president by 1970, leading some colleagues to snipe that his rise came a little too fast. "When Al wears a sharkskin...
Like Neuharth, Gannett papers are invariably well packaged, smartly designed and slickly promoted. In overall quality they run several furlongs behind Knight-Ridder but ahead of just about every other large chain. Neuharth argues that Gannett has never acquired a paper it did not improve. This is testimony partly to the sorry quality of medium-sized papers in the U.S. But it is also true that Gannett has expunged the rabid right-wing excesses from a few of its papers-notably those in Springfield, Mo., and Nashville -and dramatically upgraded other properties, like the Camden (N.J.) Courier-Post. As even...
Critics find many Gannett papers parochial and uninspired, as wholesome as enriched bread but often just as bland. Even many Gannett hands are frustrated by the company's failure to produce one truly outstanding daily. A comparison is often made with Knight-Ridder, which purchased the struggling Philadelphia Inquirer in 1969 and spent millions righting it. The Inquirer, which last week won its sixth consecutive Pulitzer, now stands comfortably in the black and high in the esteem of U.S. journalists. For some of Gannett's employees, it will take more than last week's Pulitzer to make...