Communities Fear Effect of a Knight Ridder Sale

[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Joseph Menn]
As newspaper giant Knight Ridder Inc. began mulling over buyout bids after a 5 p.m. deadline Thursday, investors and employees weren't the only ones worrying about the future. Readers and community leaders around the country also are concerned that new owners of the nation's No. 2 newspaper chain will scale back coverage, install unfamiliar leaders or cut charity and other civic efforts. Cost cutting is likely to pay acquisition costs. Sooner or later, those cuts would translate into reduced coverage and a diminished civic dialogue, said John McManus, director of a journalism watchdog project at San Jose State University, near Knight Ridder's corporate headquarters and flagship newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News. "If newsrooms lose 25% of the people and are paid less, which I think will happen, then the quality of news will damage the civic vitality of these communities," McManus said. Even people who don't read a paper will suffer, he said, because "a lot of what local TV, local radio and bloggers do is based on what they learn from the newspaper." He said the changes might be more profound in places like Aberdeen, population 25,000. "People in smaller and medium markets are more dependent on the monopoly papers than in larger markets," he said.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-knight10mar10,1,99719...
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