Knight Out
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006My newspaper has been sold. Sort of. Knight Ridder, the owner of the Akron Beacon Journal and 31 others, was bought by the McClatchy company. McClatchy has limited appetites. It only wants 20 new papers so it is selling 12 of the KR papers. The Beacon Journal is one of them.
The Akron Beacon Journal isn't just any Knight Ridder paper. It is John S. Knight's original paper. It has won 4 Pulitzers. The paper had the good taste to encase his typewriter in glass, rather than Mr. Knight himself, here in the building. The Knight empire included the Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Detroit Free Press. The company had a reputation for hiring good people and letting them do their thing. I liked working for Knight Ridder. I figured it meant I must be O.K.
All the Knight Ridder papers are profitable. Newspapers are a good deal (McClatchy thinks so too). The Beacon Journal costs 35 cents.
That's way less than a cup of coffee.
Why are you people so cheap? I don't suppose the fact that you're getting it here for free has anything to do with it.
Times are tough in the main steam. Media analyst, Dave Barry, had this to say: Newspapers are Dead. He also feels newspapers are now grasping at anything, like blogs. Hmmm.
Go crazy. Run out and buy a coffee and a newspaper right now.











