A sampling in the wake of news that McClatchy will buy Knight Ridder, then sell a dozen dailies:
John Blossom: “… for the time being McClatchy is off to a promising if noisy start to as good a strategy as any one could come up with to manage the most promising and profitable Knight Ridder properties. For those left out in the cold from this deal our true sympathies, but sentiment will not take the place of good business sense oftentimes lacking in forging a solid future for news organizations in major markets.”
Susan Mernit: “I’m wondering what will happen to the digital assets–ShopLocal, Topix and KRD corporate development–will they remain intact, be moved to Sacramento, or be broken apart?” Rich Skrenta reminds her that KR, Gannett and Tribune are partners in Topix. “McClatchy is a great company, working with them would actually be a big plus in our minds. Don’t worry about Topix, our success is more about our own execution rather than any external factors.”
Carl Howe: “But the fact that these newspapers might be sold for firesale prices raises an interesting possibility. Just as AOL snapped up Time Warner at the height of the dot com boom, perhaps we should be looking for a new media surprise. After all, Google has already acquired a radio advertising company, dMarc. And Microsoft wants to create a big ad network and search engine of its own. Imagine what might happen if one of those two big Internet names took over the 12 newspapers McClatchy is selling and decided to turn them into a single, national news organization carrying contextual advertising.”
Peter Krasilovsky: “KR fits into McClatchy’s plans less as a traditional newspaper company, than as part of a long-term transition to direct marketing, with the news playing an increasingly smaller role. The Internet, however, looms ever larger.”
More in extended comments
Dan Gillmor: “Having met and chatted with some of their senior folks, and admiring the journalists I know there, I’m fairly confident that McClatchy will do well. But it faces the same economic pressures that forced Knight Ridder to cave in to speculators and other investors for whom journalism is an abstraction รข
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