By: Mark Fitzgerald The Newspaper Guild, which some years ago created the online "Knight Ridder Watch," is watching the company harder than ever as two big investors call for the sale of the second-largest newspaper chain.
Henry Holcomb, president of the Guild's Knight Ridder Council, said the coalition of locals at various Knight Ridder newspapers was "working very hard to monitor" the situation.
"We're prepared to look out for the interests of our members, and we think we have the leverage and the resources to be very effective in that," said Holcomb, who head the Philadelphia Guild local.
The Knight Ridder Council discussed the possibility of a Knight Ridder sale at its meeting last month, but there's nothing unusual about that, Holcomb said.
"At almost every Knight Ridder Council meeting, the possibility of a takeover of Knight Ridder comes up -- because the company keeps mentioning it," he said with a laugh. "But no, were not prescient enough to know that this would emerge from Florida," he added, referring to the first investor demanding a sale, Private Capital Management LP, in Naples, Fla.
A sale has been an obvious possibility "since the plunging stock value made it clear that Wall Street was starting to suspect that the earlier profits were not sustainable ... and they wanted to know if Knight Ridder had anything to show besides cuts," Holcomb said.
"This decision is not going to be made by opinions, yours or mine," Holcomb said. "Right now there's a lot of posturing going on. [Knight Ridder Chairman] Tony Ridder is at retirement age. There's all sorts of possibilities that could happen."
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