Sixty present and former Knight Ridder workers, mostly editors and writers, said in an open letter that they will propose their own slate of nominees for the Knight Ridder board whose intent will be “to reassert John Knight’s creed.”
The newspaper company is under pressure from its largest shareholder, Private Capital Management of Naples, Fla., to put itself up for sale because the stock price is too low.
“Knight Ridder routinely has generated double-digit operating profits – such as last year’s 19.4 percent,” the letter said. “We understand the obligation of an institutional investor to maximize return on investment. An investor for whom double digits are insufficient is free to sell Knight Ridder stock. An investor who instead demands the sale or dismantling of Knight Ridder merely in the name of a larger profit margin is engaged not in good business but in greed.”
“Knight Ridder is not merely another public company. It is a public trust. It must balance corporate profitability with civic purpose. We oppose those who would cripple the purpose by coercing more profit. We abhor those for whom good business is insufficient and excellent journalism is irrelevant,” the letter said.
The signers include eight Pulitzer Prize winners, six former Miami Herald workers including former publisher David Lawrence Jr., former executive editor Doug Clifton, and former managing editor Pete Weitzel, and two former editors from the Tallahassee Democrat.
Read the open letter here.