KNIGHT-RIDDER BURIER

"Many people in the newspaper industry are scratching their heads over how a company with relatively high profit margins allowed itself to be wiped off the media landscape..."

This is just the lead of a long piece in today´s New York Times about how Tony Ridder sold the second largest U.S. newspaper company.

In a few weeks, Knight Ridder was gone (18,000 employees and 32 daily newspapers with a combined circulation of 3.7 million): sold to the McClatchy Company for $4.5 billion and the assumption of $2 billion in debt.

“Could anyone imagine 10 years ago saying that in 10 years, Knight Ridder would not exist?” asked Jay T. Harris, a former publisher for Knight Ridder at The San Jose Mercury News who quit in 2001 rather than make cuts that the company sought. “It was one of the strongest newspaper companies in America. How could you have a hand like that and play it in such a way that you would end up losing everything?”

A sad story of an incompetent CEO.

And a perfect lesson about how not to run a media company.