Pioneer Press says Par stole secrets

His password was "Mocha." But other data on Par Ridder's laptop computer would have been even tastier to his new bosses.

Last month, Ridder left the publisher's job at the St. Paul Pioneer Press - the newspaper his great-grandfather bought in 1927 - to become publisher of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The defection to the larger, more stable rival across the Mississippi River was a shock, given their intense competition for readers and advertisers.

Now the Pioneer Press claims in a lawsuit that Ridder handed over spreadsheet after spreadsheet of sensitive data to the Star Tribune - budgets, monthly profits, employee wage data, and perhaps most important, how much advertisers were paying. It claims that Ridder stole a file folder with his own non-compete agreement and that of other Pioneer Press executives, and the Star Tribune failed to return copies of the data he took.

The advertiser information alone would allow the Star Tribune to launch "an extraordinarily damaging" pricing campaign aimed at stealing advertisers, the lawsuit said.

When Ridder announced his resignation, Dean Singleton - chief executive of MediaNews Group Inc., which runs the Pioneer Press - said he wasn't worried about trade secrets. Singleton felt much differently last week.

"I didn't know at that time the magnitude of the heist," Singleton said Friday. "I thought at the time that Par would make a gracious exit, and would be honorable, and I didn't know he had stolen everything we had."

The lawsuit filed in state court names Ridder, the Star Tribune, its parent company and two other executives Ridder recruited from the Pioneer Press and alleges fraud by Ridder and violation of state trade secret laws. Besides unspecified compensation, it seeks to have Ridder removed as publisher of the Star Tribune for a year because of a non-compete agreement.

The Star Tribune issued a statement by Chairman Chris Harte saying: "There are facts in dispute relative to the recent move of Par Ridder from the St. Paul Pioneer Press to the Star Tribune. We will address these matters point by point in our legal response to the complaint and look forward to a full resolution."

Click on the headline to read the full Associated Press story by Joshua Freed