“I’d rather be known as the man who had a god-damned good newspaper –readable, lively, well-illustrated, up to date –than the guy who had the paper about which they said, ’He’s the fellow who makes the most money.’”
Taken from a story by Dan Neuharth who worked for the Miami Herald in the 1970s and interviewed Knight in 1978 three years before his death at the age of 86. The story was published on the Commentary page of the Beacon Journal on Wednesday, March 29, under a headline which questioned, “Can journalism survive Wall St.?
Click on the headline above to read the commentary.
1 comment:
I was proud to work on John Knight's original newspaper. John Knight knew what Tony Ridder did not, that trying to appease Wall Street by sacrificing staff and quality is like trying to outrun a snowball down a hill. The faster you run, the larger the snowball gets till it flattens you.
And you wind up with neither quality journalism nor a financially vibrant company.
John Knight was his own man, and a goddamn good editor. Tony Ridder is neither.
So Knight employees and retirees, at the Beacon Journal and elsewhere, are paying the price for the switch from Knight to Ridder.
They just keep ratcheting up the rpm of John Knight's body in his grave.
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