PRINTING MONEY.(The Talk of the Town)(McClatchy buys Knight-Ridder)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 03-APR-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Two weeks ago, when the newspaper publisher McClatchy announced that it was buying the venerable Knight Ridder chain, for the lowball price of $6.5 billion, McClatchy's C.E.O., Gary Pruitt, called the deal "a vote of confidence in the newspaper industry." But few people bought Pruitt's pitch (or his stock--McClatchy's shares have dropped nine per cent since the deal was announced). And why would they? At this point, everyone knows that newspapers are doomed. Lumbering apatosauruses reliant on old technology and a creaking business model, papers are losing readers--the Washington Post saw its circulation drop four per cent, to less than seven hundred thousand, last year--and losing ad dollars. The Internet has demolished the economics of the industry, allowing people to read, free, news from many sources, and providing a cheaper platform for classified...

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