Sad BJ sale day

The BJ has been sold to Gatehouse Media, continuing the ownership degradation that began when John Shively Knight immersed his empire with the less-than-stellular Ridder roustabouts.

The BJ was born in 1897 when the Summit Beacon merged with the Akron Evening Journal.

In 1903 Charles Landon Knight purchased the BJ. In 1933 C.L.’s son, John Knight, inherited the BJ when his father died.

It was heavily in debt. JSK built it into the successful and highly regarded Knight Newspapers where winning Pulitzers was NOT a rare event (the BJ won four during my 26 years there).

Knight and Ridder merged in 1974, becoming the largest newspaper group in America.

By 2006, without JSK’s guidance, KRI was sold to McClatchy and the BJ became the Canadian Black Press’ property.

The $16 million sale to Greathouse is the culmination of going from JSK’s brilliant protection to a string of owners who couldn’t carry Shively’s jockstrap.

This is NO reflection on those who work at the BJ today, or since my 1996 retirement. It is a tale of what happens when a company goes from a guy who respected all his employees more than the bottom line to those who don’t in today’s desperate newspapers situations.

Want proof?

A Gatehouse official pronounced this menacing and frightening thought:

"We are not accepting labor agreements."

Gatehouse can do that because it's an "assets sale." Doesn't get any more impersonal than that.

Gatehouse owns 142 newspapers, including the Canton Repository, Kent/Ravenna Record-Courier, Alliance Review and the Wooster Daily Record.


RIP, Ol’ Blue Walls. We knew ye well. And loved the hell out of ye.