In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 6

Owned Philly Newspaper where Democracy Now! Co-Host worked & funded NAHJ 

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 6

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

Democracy Now! part-time co-host Juan Gonzalez’s career as a professional journalist in the corporate media world began in 1979 after his journalism course instructor at Temple University, who was a moonlighting editor at the Philadelphia Daily News evening newspaper of the Knight-Ridder corporate media firm, that also owned the Philadelphia Inquirer morning daily newspaper, encouraged Gonzalez to apply for a clerical job at the Philadelphia Daily News in late 1978; and he was soon promoted to be a full-time reporter for the newspaper by early 1979.

Prior to merging with the super-rich Ridder dynasty’s newspaper chain in 1974, to create a newspaper chain of 35 daily and 25 Sunday newspapers that made Knight-Ridder the largest U.S. corporate newspaper chain at that time, the super-rich Knight dynasty had purchased its two Philadelphia newspapers from the super-rich Walter Annenberg’s corporate media conglomerate for $55 million [equivalent to over $369 million in 2018] in 1969. When Gonzalez began working for the Knight-Ridder corporate media firm’s Philadelphia Daily News in 1979, John “Jack” Knight and James "Jim" Knight owned 30 percent of Knight-Ridder’s stock, three Ridder dynasty members owned 7 percent of Knight-Ridder’s stock and the Knight-Ridder board of directors included John Knight, James Knight and the three Ridder dynasty members.

After John “Jack” Knight died two years later, much of the $200 million [equivalent to over $542 million in 2018] worth of Knight-Ridder/Philadelphia Daily News stock which he owned in 1981 was left to the “non-profit” Knight Foundation, to avoid payment of heavy estate taxes. As the Knight Foundation’s 1995 Annual Report noted:

“When John S. Knight died in 1981, he left to the Foundation most of his holdings in Knight-Ridder…James L. Knight succeeded his brother as chairman, and Lee Hills, former Knight-Ridder chief executive officer, was put in charge of planning the transition from a small foundation to one of the largest in the United States…The number of trustees was increased to 13, including two of James Knight’s daughters…”

Knight Dynasty Media Barons of 20th Century: John Knight and James Knight

And when Gonzalez left the Philadelphia Daily News between late 1987 and early 1988 to begin working for the New York Daily News  (which was then owned by the Chicago-based Tribune corporate media conglomerate that also owned the WPIX-TV station in New York City), the Knight Foundation still owned a big chunk of Knight-Ridder stock, James Knight personally still owned 14 percent of Knight-Ridder’s stock, now worth about $439 million [equivalent to over $987 million in 2018], and the three Ridder dynasty members also continued to own Knight-Ridder newspaper chain stock. Then, when James “Jim” Knight died in February 1991, he also left $200 million [equivalent to over $318 million in 2018] to the Knight Foundation.

So by early 1996, when Knight-Ridder’s former Philadelphia Daily News-turned New York Daily News columnist became Democracy Now!’s co-host, the Knight Foundation owned “2,630,451 shares…of common stock of Knight-Ridder Inc., which represented 17.2 percent…of the Foundation’s assets” that was worth around $165 million [equal to around $263 million in 2018], according to the Knight Foundation’s 1995 Annual Report. In addition, in 1996 the “non-profit” Knight Foundation also owned $409 million [equal to over $656 million in 2018] worth of stock in other profit-oriented corporations, as well as $52 million [equal to $83 million in 2018] worth of real estate. And according to its 1995 Annual Report:

“Overall, Knight Foundation’s portfolio returned 25.7 percent in 1995…The Foundation’s assets totaled $957.5 million [equal to over $1.5 billion in 2018] at the end of 1995, an increase of $212 million from the previous year…Investments added $195 million in value.”

Yet “the Foundation” was “not subject to federal income tax;” and only $26 million of the Knight Foundation’s $212 million increase in assets was redistributed to its grant recipients, according to the same annual report.


Besides having worked for a Philadelphia newspaper owned, in part, by the Knight Foundation during the 1980s, Gonzalez also helped establish the National Association of Hispanic Journalists [NAHJ] in 1984; and, while a co-host of Democracy Now! show, he was also the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ president between 2002 and 2004.  Coincidentally, between 2003 and 2011, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists group received grants of $240,000 from the “Challenge Fund for Journalism” program begun in 2003 by the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation-- which owned part of the institutionally racist Knight-Ridder newspaper that employed Gonzalez in the 1980s, but generally failed to hire many other Hispanic journalists from the Latino community or from Latino national ethnic backgrounds between 1979 and 2003. (end of part 6)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dyansty's Hidden History--Conclusion

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

Since Akron, Ohio was the city where the Knight Dynasty established the local press monopoly from which, historically, it was able to build its newspaper chain, as well as the city where the rubber companies had, historically, a special economic influence until recently, ties between the Knight family and rubber industry executives were historically close. Edwin J. Thomas, who was Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s chairman of the board until 1964, for example, also served as a Knight Newspapers director prior to its merger with the Ridder newspaper chain in 1974. The 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited described the nature of this rubber industry executive’s relation to Jack Knight for many years:

“Among all the people Jack Knight knew…there was none so close as Edwin J. Thomas. This was a…man…closer to Knight than any blood relative…They played golf frequently…They talked almost every day, by telephone if not in person, often long-distance…”

And in the early 1990s, at least one rubber industry company director—B.F. Goodrich Co. Director John Weinberg—also sat on the corporate board of the Knight-Ridder media conglomerate.

As previously mentioned, much of the $200 million worth of Knight-Ridder media conglomerate stock which John “Jack” Knight owned at the time of his death in 1981 was left to the Knight Foundation to avoid payments of heavy estate taxes. And, coincidentally, in 1975 a former Goodyear rubber company executive named C.C. Gibson had been hired to be the Knight Foundation’s then-president.

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 5

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

During the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, John S. Knight apparently also used his personal editorial column to defend HUAC’s investigation of the U.S. entertainment industry—which often led to the civil liberties of U.S. actors and actresses being violated. As the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited recalled:

“In an `Editor’s Notebook’ column of August 21, 1955, Knight praised the work of the House Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC] investigating suspected Communists and fellow travelers in the entertainment industry: `We feel nothing but disgust and indignation over the refusal of actors to give satisfactory answers to questions put to them by the committee. It is their responsibility as citizens to speak up or be adjudged in their true colors as principals in the Communist conspiracy.”

Prior to the CIA’s unsuccessful 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the editors of the Knight Dynasty’s Miami Herald “figured an invasion of Cuba could happen anytime” and “John McMullan, assistant managing editor, wanted to break the story and publish what reporters had gathered, which was considerable,” according to the book Knights Of The Fourth Estate by Nixon Smiley. But coincidentally, according to the same book, “Jack Knight…ordered the story held…” (end of part 5)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 4

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

The Knight Newspaper Dynasty may not have been too generous to their Knight-Ridder workers, historically, but its Knight-Ridder board of directors was quite generous, historically, to the newspaper chain’s top managers in the 1990s. In 1992, for example, Knight-Ridder’s then-chief executive officer [CEO] and Chairman of the Board James Batten was paid an annual salary of $604,000 (in 1990s money).

During the years when he controlled the Knight newspaper chain, John “Jack” S. Knight apparently was also a strong political supporter of Richard Nixon. When some Republican Party officials attempted “to dump” then-Vice President Nixon from the Eisenhower re-election ticket during the mid-1950s, “rising to his defense was John S. Knight,” because “he liked Richard Nixon,” according to the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited. The same book also described how John Knight had used his newspaper chain column and editorial power to back Nixon in his rise to power during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s:

“In the early days, when he had been a congressman or vice-president or private citizen, it had been `Dick’ and `Jack.’ Nixon would send chatty little notes referring to this Knight column or that, provided the article had been favorable. The practice continued…into Richard M. Nixon’s presidency…

“…Knight had been his consistent supporter, even during…the 1950s when critics in and out of the Republican Party dismissed him as `Tricky Dick’…Knight Newspapers thus endorsed him for president against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968…” (end of part 4)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 3

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

The idea of further reducing competition in the U.S. newspaper industry by merging the Knight Dynasty’s newspaper chain with the Ridder Dynasty’s newspaper chain was first mentioned in a memo of the Goldman, Sachs & Co. Wall Street investment banking firm in 1966, when Alan Stern wrote the following:

“Ed Hoffman of our buying department at Goldman, Sachs is the cousin of Herman H. Ridder, president of Ridder Publications. Through Ed I met with Mr. Ridder…Mr. Ridder indicated that his first interest was merging with another…newspaper chain. Specifically, he mentioned Knight newspapers…”

And as the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited noted, “Eight years later, the suggestion would develop into the most lucrative merger in U.S. newspaper history.” In July 1974, the Knight and Ridder dynasties merged their companies in a chain of 35 daily and 23 Sunday newspapers with a 3.8 million daily circulation that made it the largest U.S. newspaper chain at that time.

The Knight-Ridder media conglomerate whose stock was owned by the Knight Foundation in the 1980s apparently then violated U.S. environmental protection laws. For example, according to Knight-Ridder’s 1992 10-K Disclosure form:

“The Company has been identified by certain regulatory agencies as one of several potentially responsible parties in connection with the generation of allegedly hazardous substances which may have been disposed of or reclaimed by third-party contractors at sites in New Jersey, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The company, certain other potentially responsible parties and the United States Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] have entered into consent orders relating to the sites in New Jersey, South Carolina, and North Carolina.”

One reason the Knight Dynasty was able to run its newspaper chain so profitably prior to the 1974 merger with the Ridder Dynasty’s chain was that it wasn’t too chivalrous in its treatment of its unionized employees. When the Knight Dynasty owned the Chicago Daily News, for example, it broke the 1947 to 1949 ITU printers’ strike of the newspaper, rather than negotiate a fair settlement with its employees.

The Knight Dynasty also chose to break a 1948-1953 strike of its unionized Miami Herald workers rather than negotiate in good faith. As the book Knight recalled: “The Miami Herald…defied work stoppages to the point of ousting troublemaking unions from their operations…" When pressmen and mailroom employees struck the Miami Herald in 1961, the Knight Dynasty again refused to bargain in good faith. Although Knight-Ridder was a huge, profitable media conglomerate in the early 1990s, only 60 percent of its employees in the 1990s were unionized. (end of part 3)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 2

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

After C.I. Knight died in 1933, his then-39-year-old son—John “Jack” S. Knight—inherited the Knight Dynasty’s Akron Beacon-Journal and the Massillon Independent (which had been purchased in 1928 with the money the Knight family obtained from selling its Springfield Sun newspaper after C.I. Knight’s defeat in the Ohio gubernatorial election) in Ohio. Current Biography 1945 described how John S. Knight then managed to increase the profitability and special influence of his family’s business during the Great Depression:

“Extending his newspaper holdings, Knight bought the Miami (Florida) Herald in October 1937 for $2 million. Two months later he arranged to trade his Massillon Independent for the Miami Tribune which he then discontinued. (He had purchased it with the intention of suspending publication, for he felt there was no room in Miami for three papers). Thus, the publisher of the Herald became the owner of the only Miami morning daily…In 1938 he eliminated competition to the Beacon-Journal by buying out the Scripps-Howard Times Press. In this way Knight achieved a press monopoly in Akron, making the city and its suburbs `the largest one-paper community in the country.’”

At the same time he was shutting down previously-competing newspapers and using media monopolization techniques to increase the profitability of his family’s newspaper chain, John S. Knight was also serving as a member of the Summit County Republican Party Executive Committee in Ohio, and was complaining about “New Deal spending and labor philosophy,” according to the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited.

In 1940, John S. Knight then dished out $3.1 million to add the Detroit Free Press to the family’s chain and in 1944 another $2.1 million was dished out to add the Chicago Daily News to the family’s stable, until it was re-sold in 1959 for $24 million to Marshal Field Jr.. In 1954, the Charlotte Observer was added to the Knight newspaper chain for $7 million and in 1959 the previously competing Charlotte News was also added. In 1965, the Tallahassee Democrat in Florida was also purchased.

By 1968, the Knight Dynasty’s newspapers’ combined daily circulation in Detroit, Miami, Charlotte, Akron and Tallahassee approached 1.5 million and “The Knights also had interests in a TV station, three radio stations, and three Florida weekly papers,” as well as a gross annual income of about $123 million (in 1960s money), according to Knight. The following year, the Knight family purchased the chain’s Philadelphia newspaper for $55 million and immediately replaced 70 Philadelphia Inquirer reporters and editors. And in 1972, the Knight Dynasty dished out another $37 million ot buy yet another newspaper operation which some other family had built: the Lexington Herald & Leader in Kentucky. (end of part 2)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 1

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)


Between 1970 and 2006—when the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain was sold to the McClatchy newspaper chain for $6.5 billion—much of the Knight-Ridder media conglomerate was owned by members of the ultra-rich Knight family and the Knight Foundation [whose assets currently exceed $2.5 billion]. In 1979, for example, John Knight and James Knight owned 30 percent of Knight-Ridder stock. Much of the $200 million worth of Knight-Ridder stock which John “Jack” Knight owned at the time of his death in 1981 was then left to the Knight Foundation to avoid payment of heavy estate taxes. In 1986, about 14 percent of Knight-Ridder stock—then worth about $439 million—was still owned by James Knight. And in 1990, 10 percent of Knight-Ridder stock—then worth about $270 million—was still owned by James Knight.

The Knight family first entered the world of U.S. newspaper ownership in 1907, when Charles “C.I.” Knight “attracted financial backing to take over the Beacon Journal newspaper in Akron, Ohio, as a result of a business arrangement with a banker named Edward Held, according to the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited. Prior to naming himself editor and publisher of the Akron Beacon-Journal in 1909, C.I. Knight had worked in Bluefield, West Virginia as a corporate lawyer for U.S. coal companies and as the Akron Beacon-Journal advertising manager.

In addition to owning the Akron Beacon-Journal, C.I. Knight also wrote a biography, titled The Real Jefferson Davis, which depicted the slavocracy’s Confederate president “as a maligned idealist,” according to Knight. C.I. Knight was also personally involved in U.S. political office-seeking. In 1920, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 14th district on the Republican Party slate and, when the “Ohio Gang” ruled Washington politics during the early 1920s corrupt administration of President Warren Harding, “C.I. Knight enjoyed insider privileges at the White House,” according to Knight. The same book also noted that “to strengthen his political base,” Congressional Rep. Knight purchased the Springfield Sun daily newspaper in Ohio, around the same time he unsuccessfully ran for governor of Ohio.

In addition to using his newspapers to further his political office-seeking ambitions, C.I. Knight also apparently endorsed local political candidates editorially who helped shift public funds to his newspaper business. As Knight recalled: “Jack [Knight] had once asked C.I. [Knight] which candidate for sheriff they intended to back in a forthcoming race. `The one,’ his father replied, `who gives us the county publishing business.’”

Using the surplus profits he obtained from publishing the Akron Beacon-Journal, C.I. Knight was able to buy a 238-acre farm near Hudson, Ohio after World War I. But when it came to entertaining women companions, the Republican Party publisher-politician apparently preferred to meet them in his office, rather than on his farm. According to Knight, “there were…rumors of amorous trysts with women of easy virtue, sometimes behind the locked doors of his newspaper office.’ Not surprisingly, the same book noted that the Knight Newspaper Dynasty founder “deplored…feminism.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 9/15/93)