Monday, March 13, 2006
It's Official: McClatchy Owns Knight-Ridder
Whew. And as I mentioned earlier, this is the best of all possible outcomes. Most of the K-R empire will be kept intact, also with K-R's news-gathering organization. UPDATE: Even better, most if not all of those papers that McClatchy's going to sell (many of them simply to avoid anti-trust issues) will probably wind up in the hands of the Newspaper Guild:
The Guild has lined up the Yucaipa Companies to finance a deal to help employees buy nine Knight Ridder papers through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). If the Guild were successful, the deal would probably be structured with Yucaipa fronting some of the money for the papers. "When it comes time to the Guild's participation, money talks," said industry analyst John Morton last week about the possible success of the Guild's plan. "It really becomes a question of what sort of corporation the Guild is willing to engage in."See, I told you that McClatchy wouldn't just ax them. In fact, KR wouldn't have done the deal if they thought that McClatchy was going to summarily close these papers. That's why it's taken nearly three months for KR to get a deal -- and why they were called "arrogant" by certain folk for refusing to sell themselves off piecemeal.
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