All those concerned about the future of our community should be concerned about what is happening to our newspaper. Knight Ridder has been sold to the Sacramento-based McClatchy group who says it will sell the Mercury News. While rumors abound about who will be the final owner, our paper and its staff are going through an excruciating period in limbo.
The end of both the Ridder family’s stewardship of the paper that began in 1952 and the reign of Tony Ridder are to be regretted. The company’s standards were exemplary and their profits were respectable, but obviously that wasn’t enough for some shareholders. Although all things come to an end, this turn of events has alarmed and surprised our valley and the journalistic world.
This is a new and uncertain era for the printed news industry. Tony Ridder knew that when he brought the entire Knight Ridder headquarters back to San Jose and Silicon Valley, hoping to capitalize on the company’s proximity to the new technology that is the future of mass communications. It was bold. It was smart. But it seems it was not enough.
Just as the Hayes family’s fifty-year ownership of the Mercury was noted for its early support of epic reforms that resulted in years of growth and prosperity for our city, much of the rapid growth of San Jose and the evolution of downtown in the 1980s and 90s—the good, bad, and ugly—were the result of the aggressiveness of the paper under the Ridder family for the last fifty years. From the accurate but callous statement of Joe Ridder, “trees don’t buy papers,” to Tony Ridder’s championing of sports, culture, ethics, institutions such as the Tech, and many other good things, the Ridders were the dominant influence in the city and pivotal to the valley.
Where will the paper go now and who can possibly fill the shoes of Tony Ridder? The easy answer is: no one. Whoever fills this void will largely dictate much of the direction of San Jose over the years ahead. It will be a much rockier and uncertain role without the presence of a steady and resolute hand in the “proud tower” at Fairmont Plaza.
Two more stabbing in downtown San Jose!
The grand total is now at 6 and its only March!
There should be some way for enough investors to get together with Tony Ridder to purchase the paper. This would ensure that the present philosophy would remain. We certainly have enough voices in this forum to influence the right people to get this ball rolling. Most of us can’t make a financial committment necessary for such a venture but there are those in this valley who could step forward and make the investment. Send some emails, make some phone calls and let’s get this going.
I thought it was amazing that the headline of the SJMN read the other day, “KNIGHT RIDDER TO BE SOLD.” Ask an average Joe in this town what Knight Ridder is and I’ll bet most couldn’t tell you—but news about yourself is always news for everyone, right? Bad editorial decision by the Merc. A few years ago I was downtown and someone remarked to his companion about the Knight Ridder sign: Who’s that? What do they do? And they had their own little debate trying to figure out what company/organization that was. Hilarious. Then again, guess you had to be there. Personally I always considered the name itself comically close to the 80s TV show “Knight Rider.” Oops.
But to the real issue here: It’s true, the loss of a KR hq in downtown will have a real impact on the city, even if most people don’t notice it. I don’t think the paper is going to get shut down though. Business is rough, but it is making SOME money.
Here’s an idea:
Instead of fretting about the paper, why doesn’t Tony Ridder just hit up Sand Hill Road and the union members at the paper to raise some money and buy it back from McClatchy? I’m sure McClatchy doesn’t care who owns it, as long as they get a good price for it.
And while they’re at it, buy the CC Times—good Bay Area synergy and coverage there.
Entrepreneurship. That’s the SV way, isn’t it?
Dan is correct . Let’s get something going to save the local paper. There is always money available if people want to spend it. The city spends money all the time on non-city functions but they have been silent regarding this issue.
Anyone who knows any of the big money folks in the area should get in touch with them. Saving the paper should be a top priority. Do you really want the embarrasment of a “San Jose Today” newspaper?
Wall Street Journal article on Tuesday gave the reason for the sale of the 12 newspapers that they as a group were only projected to have a 4.8% household growth rate and a cash flow margin of 18% while the 20 newspapers they were keepinng has 11% and 30% and McClatchy did not want to keep papers that would lower profitability or not meet their investment criteria.
Newspaper Guild- Communication Workers of America which represents workers at Mercury are expected to make a bid.
Controversial Denver based MediaNews Group’s Dean Singleton who owns Oakland Tribune and other small newspapers in Northern CA is expected to be interested. Columbia Journalism Review article – “The New York Times noted his reputation as “the industry’s leading skinflint.” James Squires, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune, described him as “a rare bird indeed,” a “bone-picker publisher . “
SEE http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/2/dean-sherman.asp
Rich and others comments yesterday sum it up “Mercury News, they remain one of the best newspapers, with high journalistic integrity.” and “should remain indepenndent” and ” in the hands of a publisher with a narrow political agenda would be very dangerous”
http://sanjoseinside.com/sji/blog/entries/single_gal_and_parks/
I would add in the hands of an out of town media company who’s intent is to disassemble a great newspaper for increased profit the entire community would be damaged
Hopefully Tony Ridder, local journalists and local investors who care about our community will buy the Mercury to continue our great local paper
Random thoughts:
After reading so much criticism of the Mercury on SJI it’s interesting so see so much hand-wringing over it’s possible demise. (You don’t miss the water till the well runs dry!)
Don’t worry. We still have San Jose Magazine for hard-hitting investigative journalism.
What about David Cohen’s Silicon Valley Community Newspapers which were recently sold to Knight Ridder? What should we expect for those publications?
David Yarnold, Leigh Weimers and a few others got out in the nick of time!
What will happen with the Knight Ridder office space in downtown San Jose? Maybe a new Starbucks?
Come to think of it, will the new owner necessarily keep the Merc’s headquarters on Ridder Park Drive? It’s not inconceivable that some slick $$ jerk of a publisher would sell the real estate for a huge profit and downsize the offices for the bare-bones staff of the new Mercury Shopping News. Could happen.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Ron Gonzales outlasts the Mercury News!
Dan (#2) I like your idea of rounding up local investors. Put me down for $100.00. Hell, make it $1,000.00…but only if John McE writes the editorials.
Seriously, I hope Tony Ridder puts together investors and purchases the Merc. It makes tremendous sense for many reasons.
A note to Merc employees lurking here looking for leads (Ha! You’re busted!): Good luck!
Since the issue with the Mercury is that it is not profitable enough for the stock-holders, the solution is obvious.
Let’s either outsource the paper to Bangalore, and pay the employees pennies for the same work, or bring in H-1B workers and work them 70 hours a week while paying them less than non-indentured servant wages. Since they are H-1B they cannot quit and go to a competitor.
After all, this is Silicon Valley. The home of innovation, where money rules.
I don’t recall much criticsm of the Merc on SJI except by a certain few of our right wing friends who believe in the “leftist liberal media kabal.” Most of us have appreciated the Merc for its shining light on the crap taking place at city hall (admittedly a little late, but better late than never.) Can you imagine what the GonzalesChavezGuerra triumvirate would get away with without a Mercury News?
As someone who criticizes the Merc from time to time, I agree that Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto should be hit up for the $$$ needed to keep the Merc local. Keeping the Merc local should also involve keeping as many of its local reporters as possible.
Besides SJI there needs to be some central web site or blog where one can contribute ideas – and money – to keep the Merc local. The idea of the Merc being sold to a publisher who could shut the paper down for corporate profit – making SJ the biggest city in the US without its own daily paper deeply concerns me. It would further enhace San Jose’s image as merely a suburb of San Francisco.
The idea of the aforementioned triumvirate and other South Bay “power brokers” being able to get away with murder without a local daily paper like the Merc only motivates me (and others) to get involved. Hence, I ask not what the Merc can do for my needs now, I ask what can I do to keep the Merc local and independent. Which of these venture capitalist firms on Sand Hill Road do you contact to get interest in keeping the Merc daily and local?
Can’t believe that here in San Jose we can’t get a company going to insure that we have a responsible local paper. A city our size and no news paper, perish the thought. If Green Bay can save a football team why can’t we save our independence.
We don’t need a situation like in San Francisco. This could be the shot this area needs to get the community moving. The sad thing is this can get moving quickly but not if we wait for the greedy ones to put it together. If we wait for them it will never happen like so many other things here in San Jose. We need to forget about how much money I’ll make and work for the commen good. Put me down as a potential investor and a willing worker.
I’m just tired of the same o same o!
The local dollars are there to buy the Merc if that’s what Tony wants to facilitate. All you have to do is glance towards the hills and look up. Those bazillion square foot, appliance white homes you see defacing the the ridges above Los Gatos (and other higher elevation locations) were not built by people who are broke.
Silicon Valley is saturated with people who have enough money to buy the Merc without even flinching. Tony must have connections to a few of them.
#9 Eugene you are so right. The worst case scenario would be getting stuck with the Chronicle as the only option. That whole paper is one big journalistic joke, save for an ocassional letter to the editor.
Mark #11-
There’s no question the dollars are there. The trick is to make the newspaper something other than an altruistic investment.
Despite all the layoffs since the dot com bust the Merc’s growth prospects have not been bright.
Perhaps some of those folks in the “appliance homes” in the hills above Los Gatos should also invest in a few ads. Day-to-day that’s what pays the bills.
Maybe one of us SJose Insiders has a connection with Tony and could persuade him to address all of this in a little blog here in our world. I sure would like to get his take on all this.
Tom,
Where is the Chamber of Commerce on this important local issue? Non participating as ususal
Why does Pat Dando not write a Blog rather than have SJI edit her Rotary speech and then not respond to any comments?
Chamber almost totally abandoned downtown, local San Jose politics and local businesses unless you are a very large corporatation after they became Silicon Valley Chamber which is part of the reason why San Jose has some of it’s current problems
Mal, I know what you mean. The classifieds used to be half the paper. Now they’re hard to even locate. It seems to me like the Merc has done a good job in moving to on-line systems for their classifieds, but I’m sure the income from those annoying pop-unders isn’t anywhere near the level they used to see from the classified ads themselves.
I think Fry’s has been paying the Merc’s bills for quite some time now. Circulation suffers when so many people can get their news on line, and this has to be an issue for every newspaper in the country. Altruism and Silicon Valley are terms rarely found in the same sentence. In pitching the purchase concept to a local group of investors, it’s going to be tough to frame it as good business sense.
I wish Tony and the Guild all the luck in the world because they’re going to need it. As a regular reader for a good 45 years, I can’t imagine not having that paper waiting for me out front every morning.
#15 – Good point. The CofC is becoming even more of a dinosaur than newspapers. They are too busy making sure they endorse a Republican for mayor instead of paying attention to a critical issue like the loss of our local paper.
Pardon me if I don’t get teary-eyed over the prospect of losing the local newspaper that I have come to loathe. While I acknowledge the possibility of getting stuck with a paper less effective at monitoring the government, I welcome the possibility of getting one less obsessed with promoting the politics of race.
Having grown-up and gone to school in neighborhoods disproportionately Hispanic and poor, it has pained me to watch the Mercury News of the last thirty some-odd years playing into the hands of the race-merchants. By accentuating difference despite great commonality, attributing the plight of the lazy and untalented to the indifference of others, and tarnishing the legacy of neighborhood educators by blaming them for failures that took root in the home, the Mercury has done a great disservice to the people of this city.
In the San Jose in which I grew-up there was no great conflict of values: fathers of every color hated the trouble-making cholos, worried about the honor of their daughters, and hoped their sons would stay out of trouble and grow-up to be good workers. But things were much different in the San Jose of my morning paper, a place where cholos were simply expressing pride in their heritage, young girls out all night at King and Story were merely reflecting their ethnic traditions (paseo en el parque), and vocational school were keeping Hispanic boys out of college.
Magically, through the lens of the Mercury News, dysfunctional conduct was rendered pure and realistic educational choices were the products of racism.
Such is life when it is reported by liberals who learned everything about race and poverty in colleges where the journalist’s eye is trained to see only privilege and injustice. And in San Jose they “saw” injustice aplenty, branding the police as racist oppressors (for suppressing lawlessness), fostering class resentment (in neighborhoods where hard work was considered honorable), and elevating race and gender to the detriment of performance and talent (cloaking race discrimination as “fostering diversity”).
In the San Jose in which I grew-up everyone understood that smart, lazy, criminal, and creative were traits of the individual, not products of the government. But that explanation was never good enough for the social engineers and “objective” folks at the newspaper, so they decided to change things by depicting the smart as educationally advantaged, the lazy as ignored and underserved, the criminal as disproportionately targeted by law enforcement, and the creative as the beneficiaries of “Old Boy” connections. In the shorthand of the Mercury New, in matters of failure and disappointment in the minority community, fault was never the property of the individual.
“What is to be avoided above all is the re-establishing of ‘society’ as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual.” Karl Marx
The Mercury News may be published in San Jose, but it stopped telling the story of the San Jose I know a long time ago. So, in case it does disappear, allow me to be the first to say, Adios.
Leave it to finfan to turn a discussion of a newspaper into one of his usual racial rants based on his non-existent fantasy world.
Apparently, the Merc publishes different editions based on where you live. That is the only thing that could explain how finfan’s Merc is so different than mine.
And as long as we are looking back in time, I remember when we all tried to work to together in SJ to make things better, but that was before it was easier for the finfan’s of the world to just blame everything on the liberals.
Finfan, I couldn’t agree with you more, but the Merc has been around for over 150 years and a lot of people are used to having it available to them. I don’t agree with the bleeding heart liberalism that justifies criminal behavior and places the blame for it indirectly on people like you and me who actually contribute something to the “greater good” but that’s not all the paper has offered over the years.
And I’ll ask this question again:
Anybody know what’s going to become of the SVCN’s in the scheme of things?
The Future of “OUR” Paper????
Who’s the “our” you speak of, Tom?
I read that Tony Ridder is netting about 100 million out of this deal. If he put half of it up, it is hard to believe that he would have trouble getting the rest. Combine it with the CoCo Times, and the community papers, and you have the potential of an advertising giant.
Properly managed, there is reason to believe that we could have a much better locally-focused paper. If Tony really cares, he’ll do something. Even if it fails, he’d still be very wealthy. Or, he could just enjoy the mega-millions. It is his gut-check time.
Tom McE.; We travel in different circles, Tom. I haven’t heard a single positive comment about the Murky News in either the SJ Athletic Club or the Capital Club in recent memory.
The biggest series of stroies in one issue that they have written in years was on their own demise.
The line between reporting and opinion wasn’t just blurred, it was obliterated.
And will ANYONE mourn the loss of that monstrosity to egotism that perches atop the Fairmont Tower, except that bought and paid for architecture commenter, Alan Hess?
Hoi Polloi: Easy for you to spend other peoples’ money. How much of your own are you willin’ to put up?
Chris: 26:
You can eliminate the “San Francisco” response by saying “Silicon Valley”. It has worked for me throughout the U.S., Western Europe, and New Zealand.
You can even be a bosster by saying: “In fact, it’s The Capital of Silicon Valley”. Hell, they won’t know the difference.
John Michael
Change clubs or just pump weights and forget the politcal dialogue. The Mercury was the lone voice lamenting the rise of lobbyists, ex-Mayor staffers, and the special interest stranglehold on policy during the Gonzales administration. I have had many complaints about that paper, but give them credit where it is due. They have done much and contributed much to our city and valley. TMcE
John,
That is a funny response “Silicon Valley”, don’t use it if you go away for college or they will nickname you breast boy like they did one of my friends who went to Northeastern University.
I have tried using Silicon Valley, and they either think it is a neighborhood of San Francisco or it is near LA (This is true on my trips to Italy, Spain, France and even Chicago!). So I just have given up and if they ask , “what is it near to”, I just say San Francisco.
Heard a rumor….the papers McClatchy is selling off all have one thing in common . . .they’re union papers. Anyone know if this is true?
Chris #26- I had a similar conversation with a nice couple during a stop over in Dayton. The only difference is I told them that San Jose is about 300 miles/5 hours north of LA. Works just the same if you really don’t want to give SF any credit at all.
Face it people, another reason why San Jose is a suburb of San Francisco.
We can’t get Bart
We can’t get a Baseball team
We can’t get a real Mayor
We don’t have a major newspaper now
and no one knows were we live.
Typical conversation of a SJ tourist in anywhere America or the world.
“I am from San Jose.”
“Where is that?”
“In the Bay Area”
“Near were?”
“San Francisco”
When people ask me where I’m from, I just say, “the Bay Area” and they all seem to know which bay I’m talking about. If they ask what part, I tell them.
Even the Merc has done this in an effort to become a more regional entity. Just look who’s behind “bayarea.com.”
For years I have been annoyed by articles in the Merc written by newcomers (at least I hope they are) who refer to streets like San Carlos “Blvd” or Santa Clara “Ave” and can’t believe those people aren’t called on something like that by some sort of copy editor. You’ll have to excuse my ignorance on newspaper operations, but this is the kind of sloppiness that really bugs me about a paper that’s based in San Jose. You can bet there isn’t a single Chronicle reporter who writes about Lombard “Ave.” and gets away with it.
There isn’t a newspaper out there that isn’t doing biased reporting, and people need to get over that whole thing. It’s just the way it is, the way it’s always been, and new owners aren’t going to change that. People have been reading newspapers for a long time, and should know by now that they need to see through all of that biased reporting, consider the source and pull the newsworthy pieces out from the editorialized.
Sounds like more than a few people are happy to lose a local paper if it will mean removing a giant hunk of metal from the top of a building. Everybody’s entitled to their priorities. I’m not saying I like that monstrous logo up there, but I think we all need to realize that the circumstances under which it will be removed are the worst possible.
The “our” is everyone who wants our city and community to succeed and is saddened by her failures and scandals when they occur. The loss of the Ridder ownership is a horrible occurrance to these people. It is a big group and a positive one. TMcE
Sorry, Tom, but a rare lucky stab at great story does not make up for the overall poor performance. I any event, daily newspapaers are dinosaurs that haven’t been hit by the meteor yet.
Mark T: Hey, in one of the breast-beating articles in the Murky News about the sale of Knight Ridder the writer waxed poetic about how Tony Ridder, while editor of the Murky News, was almost single handedly responsible for getting the CPA built. Well, Tony started as editor in 1977, long AFTER the CPA had been built, had a roof collapse, (which fed a lot of lawyers for a lot of years)and was re-done. They can’t even get their facts straight about their own boss.
re: Gonzalez KGO comments 3/17/06
Another Milhouse revealed?
The only on-air interview of the mayor I viewed, I noticed he avoided eye contact with the camera and the interviewer. Of course, he was indulging adultery at the time, but his wariness of media was and continues to be telling. Hates the Mercury, hates the Metro. Our public servant, Ron Milhouse Nix… er Gonz…
He is precisely why we need the Mercury News.
#35—You nailed it. Our own Richard Milhous Gonzales. Blame it on the media, blame it everybody but you and your staff. Why do we have to wait 7 more months to get rid of this guy? He is of no positive use to us anymore—he’s a joke. And after all of this, he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Has he even done anything about his Vice Mayor, Joe Guerra? The two of them probably sit up on top of the dome and laugh at the rest of us for putting up with their nonsense for so long.
Get rid of them now!