Late last night, the WSJ’s Joseph Hallinan and Dennis Berman shared details of the expected purchase of Knight Ridder to McClatchy for about $4.5 billion. This morning, the AP’s Seth Sutel confirms the deal, according to company sources on both sides.
Outside of Tony Ridder, who heads up K-R, Sutel reports that McClatchy boss Gary Pruitt has said that there would be “no plans for newsroom layoffs.”
Corporate mergers tend to change the “feel” of that company, but typically a lot of that is only seen for employees on both sides. When it comes to media mergers, it’s something that a lot of the time changes the product itself. If you’ve seen the McClatchy pubs before, such as the Sacramento Bee, you’d have noticed that it’s a very different publication than the Miami Herald, a K-R pub. Will that change, somewhat? Probably. I remember back when my local Asbury Park Press was purchased by Gannett, and how some contacts I had at the paper were reacting, and can see right now how the publication changed since that time. Change and evolution are usually good, but in a time when the print editions of newspapers are having a hard time with (at least) the younger audiences out there, consolidation creates the opportunity for not only larger successes - but larger failures. We’ll see how the new McClatchy fares, and wish them good luck.
