Demise of Knight Ridder is No. 3

Editor and Pubisher senior editor Joe Strupp's ranked the demise of Knight Ridder as No. 3 on his Top 10 Newspaper Industry Stories of 2006. Continued job cuts was No. 5

Here is the summary for No. 3

3. Knight Ridder Dissolves: We knew it was coming, but when the McClatchy Company took over Knight Ridder it set in motion one of the biggest cross-chain effects yet of a major newspaper deal. While McClatchy held on to 20 of the 32 former KR dailies, it sold off a handful to MediaNews Group, which in turn brought Hearst, Gannett and Stephens Media into the deal. Meanwhile, other buyers took over the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Akron Beacon-Journal, and the remaining properties from South Dakota to Pennsylvania. It seemed everyone short of Charles Foster Kane and Donald Trump were in the mix. But don't think this is the last of the big chain buyouts, with Tribune likely to make a move in 2007.

The others:

10. Loss of Stock Listings and TV Books (Among Other Things): There was a time when some people bought newspapers just for these specials. But with Internet competition and space cutbacks mounting, the traditional stock tables and TV grids are becoming less and less relevant.

9. Upheaval at The Miami Herald: It wasn't enough that the South Florida daily changed hands with the sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchy this year. But the longtime circulation leader also got into a tussle with sister paper, El Nuevo Herald, over coverage of the Spanish-language daily's semi-scandal involving some staffers' paid appearances on a government-supported broadcast outlet. When the dust settled, Publisher Jesus Diaz was out and Editor Tom Fiedler soon announced his retirement

8. Jill Carroll: A year ago she was a little-known freelancer covering Iraq for The Christian Science Monitor. But when the brave correspondent was kidnapped in Baghdad and held for 82 days, her abduction sparked an international movement to free her, while also drawing some controversy when major U.S. news outlets agreed to a news blackout of the kidnapping for the first 48 hours.

7. The New York Times Reveals Bank Records Monitoring Program: Reporter James Risen, who months earlier had uncovered the Bush Administration domestic wiretapping program, teamed with staffer Eric Lichtblau to expose the federal government's SWIFT program that kept watch on thousands of banking records.

6. Subpoenas: That ugly word continues to rear its head, most prominently in San Francisco where San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada were found in contempt for failing to reveal their source in the award-winning BALCO steroid scandal coverage. They face a possible jail cell in February.

5. Continued Job Cuts: The year continued a downward trend in job security, with papers from the Los Angeles Times to The Washington Post either announcing such cuts or implementing them. The same old causes, declining ads, circulation and growing competition, were the usual culprits.

4. Labor Battles: Newspaper unions felt the brunt of management angst more than ever in 2006, with contract battles at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, The Boston Globe, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and even the York (Pa.) Daily Record, among others.

2. Dean Baquet Firing/Tribune Problems: It seems like it was just a year ago that the hiring of Dean Baquet, the first black editor of the Los Angeles Times, was big news. That's because it was just a year ago. When Baquet and former publisher Jeff Johnson stood up to Tribune Company calls for even further cutbacks, they received praise, accolades and platitudes. Unfortunately, Tribune honchos did not see the courage in their convictions, dumping both in a matter of weeks.

1. The Web Comes of Age: Hands down, the online growth, both for and against newspapers, was the dominant story in 2006. The daily miracle became less daily and more, well, minute by minute. Not only did numerous papers, from USA Today to Chicago Tribune, either combine their print and Web newsrooms or establish a "24-hour news cycle," but nearly every paper saw their online audience surpass their print readers.

Blogs exploded, with dozens sprouting at many papers' sites. Podcasts became common. Amid Youtube mania, sites feverishly added more and more video.

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