Tony Ridder Still Having Fun

By: Lucia Moses Despite a long economic slog for the industry, with no guarantee of a quick upturn, Tony Ridder insists he's still having fun. Knight Ridder remains the nation's second-largest newspaper chain, with 31 daily papers and 26 non-dailies -- along with 32 Knight Ridder Digital sites and its nationwide Real Cities Network. Although Ridder, the company's chairman and CEO since 1995, points to many reasons for optimism for his newspapers, including a steadying of the employment classified dive, some financial analysts question his strategy of growing circulation by selective price discounting, and wonder how much further he can cut costs.

E&P caught up with the 62-year-old Ridder in December when he was in New York, to talk about the criticism, his plans to grow the company, and how he hopes to leave it -- which he is in no hurry to do. "I love going to work," he says.

Q. Let's talk about the future of Knight Ridder overall. If keeping the company independent is the goal, how do you plan to do that?

To manage the business in a way where we're considered top-tier financially, and top-tier journalistically. Most times, people who lose their independence were people who were not managing their business in a top-tier financial way.

Q. What about acquisitions?

We have made some Internet acquisitions. ... In a typical market, 10% of the ad dollars go to other local print. Our acquisition strategy is to add to the Internet, to buy these niche publications -- what we'd call other local print.

Q. What's the endgame in Seattle? Do you see a way out for Knight Ridder's 49.5% ownership in the Seattle Times Co.?

Not at the present time. The endgame we have is that someday we will be able to acquire the other 50%. At the present time, [the Blethens] are not interested in selling. I don't know if it will [change]. If it does, we'd be interested. There are only two options: Stay or sell.

Q. So the most likely outcome now?

Stay right where we are.

Q. You've tried to demonstrate that you care as much about the journalistic standards at Knight Ridder as the profits. Is that message getting across? And if so, how do you know?

I think maybe the best indication is, we really don't have trouble attracting people to work in our newsrooms. We're able to attract some of the most qualified people in the industry. Our staffing is above the industry's average numbers.

Q. Now that the dust has settled from the Jay Harris episode, do you have any perspective on it that you didn't have before? Do you still feel you got a bad rap in the resulting coverage?

I think a lot of things that were said were not true, so I think the proof of what we stand for is how we conduct ourselves, the way we operate in our newsrooms. Not that you can't find disenchanted people in our newsrooms, but... how we treat people who work for us, and having our newspapers be good places to work where people are treated fairly, are very important.

Q. Was there anything you felt was particularly unfair in the Jay Harris coverage?

Profits were falling, margins were falling, and people just accepted the statement that we were improving margins while revenues were falling. People were saying things like, "Knight Ridder has the highest margins in the industry," and a lot of people accepted it without bothering to find out the truth.

Q. In the industry, production workers are aging, recruitment efforts by the business side have been scaled back, and minority candidates remain difficult for the news side to attract. What are your biggest staffing concerns?

Finding talented people in all parts of the newspaper to come into the business, when there's a lot of negative things written about the future of newspapers. About 30% of the United States is made up of people of color. The population of our company overall is about equal to that. But that doesn't say that we're 30% at every level of the company. So that's the challenge for us, to develop people of color so that we are roughly comparable to the population at all levels of the organization.

Q. Talk a little about Knight Ridder's approach to reaching the next generation of readers.

What we have done is we have a group of editors including Jerry [Ceppos] come up with 20 questions that fall into seven categories, such as "fairness" or "people like me." We feel that these seven tenets are what draw readership to our newspapers - readership at all levels. It's hard to say what young people are interested in that other people are not interested in, (but) all young people are concerned about whether the paper is fair. Young people, particularly if they're a minority, want to feel it's a paper for people like them. So if they are a minority and they feel it's written and edited by white males, they're less likely to buy it.

In the fall of 2002, we took these 20 questions and started with a task force of editors but then it was reviewed by a lot of editors around the company and corporate people. Polk [Laffoon] and I, and others on the corporate staff went out in the field and we measured, paper by paper, question by question, tenet by tenet, how they felt about their newspaper. We also at the same time took the same survey of the newsroom staff to see how their views on those questions compared to the views of our readers.

We are about to find out how we did over the past year, where we made progress, where we didn't make progress, whether we improved overall. We feel these tenets are most important in determining what is going to cause people to be more likely to read a newspaper. ... How are they getting their information? Are they getting it from free publications? And if they are, why shouldn't we be looking at that information? Why should we allow other people to do that? Why shouldn't we be competing with people who are doing that?

So that's why we're looking at it. That's why we're doing "Blue" [a daily section wrapped around the State College, Pa., Centre Daily Times], that's why we're doing Street [in Miami, a free entertainment publication]. That's why we're now trying to look at what we should be doing in all of our markets. We will not have a cookie-cutter kind of approach to this thing. ... Our advertisers want it. Our advertisers want to reach young people.

Q. What's your succession plan? Newspaper Division President Steve Rossi's the logical choice; is anyone else being groomed or considered for the job?

Steve is clearly the No. 2 person in the company, and he's a very talented individual. But the board of directors will pick my successor.

Q. How do you feel about a non-Ridder leading the company?

I feel great about it. As a matter of fact, [former CEO Jim] Batten wasn't a Ridder. There's [former CEO Alvah H.] Chapman. We're very much a public company, and my successor will not be a Ridder. I will not recommend that my successor be a Ridder.

Q. Would you consider staying beyond age 65?

I have no pressure to move on. I love my job. I love going to work. It's fun. I work with really great people. We are not political. If I see any office politics, I get rid of it right away.

We've got to figure out lots of issues: How do we grow circulation? How do we grow advertising faster than the markets we're in?

Q. You wrote in "E&P" recently about your father's [former chairman Bernard H. Ridder Jr.] legacy at Knight Ridder. What legacy do you want to leave the company?

The legacy I hope I'll leave for the company is that the values that made Knight Ridder a great company have been carried forward during my time as CEO. We are valued in three ways: Quality journalism is as important a value as it's ever been. Nobody treats their employees better than Knight Ridder, it's the best place to work in the industry. Third, Knight Ridder has clearly established itself as a top-tier financial player, and that was not true when I became CEO.