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)

Who Rules GM?

GM is famous for being one of the world’s largest transnational industrial corporations, for laying off its U.S. factory workers before it lays off its cheaper labor in its factories outside the Untied States, for manufacturing tanks for both the German Army and the U.S. Army during World War II, and for being so mismanaged that it can’t compete successfully with Japanese Establishment-owned automobile manufacturers. So what’s good for General Motors is not necessarily what’s good for most people in the United States.

But as the GM web sitereveals, in recent years GM’s board of directors has included the following U.S. Establishment businesspeople:

1. Morgan Stanley, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance, Cousins Properties and Erskine Bowles & Co. Director, Carousel Capital Senior Advisor, University of North Carolina President and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.

2. Goldman Sachs Group Director, former Sara Lee Chairman/CEO and University of Chicago and Art Institute of Chicago Trustee John Bryan.

3. Merrill Lynch, Home Depot, AMR Director and Flagler Development CEO Armando Codina.

4.Coca Cola Chairman/CEO, former Sun Trust Banks Director and Center for Strategic International Studies and U.S. Council for International Business Trustee E. Neville Isdell.

5. Deutsche Bank Advisory Board Member and former Compaq Computer CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer.

6. BP and Union Pacific Director, former Alliance Energy Chairman/CEO, University System of Georgia Chancellor and University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University Trustee Erroll Davis Jr.

7. Harris Corporation, Home Depot, Catalyst Director, former Pfizer Vice-chairman, Pfizer Foundation Chairman, Essex Woodlands Health Ventures Senior Adviser and University of Chicago Trustee Karen Katen.

8. Former Northrup Grumman Chairman, Fluor, Avery Denison and Mannkind Director, MIT Lincoln Library Advisory Board Member, California Institute of Technology and Haynes Foundation Trustee Kent Kresa.

9. E.I. DuPont de Nemours Executive Vice-President and Tufts University Trustee Ellen Kullman.

10. Former Ernst & Young Chairman/CEO and Loew’s, Discover Financial Services and Henry Schein Director Philip Laskawy.

11. Former GE Fleet Services CEO and Ceridian Chairman/CEO Kathryn Marinello.

12. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Senior Advisor and former Eastman Kodak Chairman/CEO George Fisher.

13. Former Astra Zeneca PLC-UK Chairman Percy Barnevik.

14. Former GM de Brasil President, Duke University Trustee and Harvard Business School Dean’s Advisory Board Member G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.

Similarly, in the early 1990s, GM’s board of directors included the following U.S. Establishment businesspeople:

1. Citibank/Citicorp, PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson Director Roger Smith.

2. Chevron/Gulf Oil, Bechtel and Boeing Director George Shultz.

3. J.P. Morgan & Co./Morgan Guaranty Trust Director Dennis Weatherstone.

4. Citibank/Citicorp, AT & T, Metropolitan Life Insurance Director and Rockefeller Brothers Fund Trustee James Evans.

5. National Bank of Detroit/NBD Bancorp and American Airlines Director Charles Fisher III.

6. Merck & Co. and NCR Corp. Director John Horan.

7. Marriott Corp. Director J. Willard Marriott Jr.

8. Chase Manhattan Bank/Chase Manhattan Corp., International Paper Co., and Pfizer Inc. Director Edmund Pratt Jr.

9. J.P. Morgan & Co./Morgan Guaranty Trust and Procter & Gamble Director John Smale.

10. AT&T Director Thomas Wyman.

So don’t be surprised if the corporate folks who still rule the privately-owned, not yet-nationalized, GM eventually get a big corporate welfare grant from the U.S. Establishment’s federal government—before GM’s rulers once again start laying-off more of its U.S. factory workers in 2009 who are members of the UAW.

(Downtown 3/11/92)

Recalling Big Banks' Role In 1990s Dot-Com Bust

Some of the same Wall Street big banks whose financially reckless banking practices helped create the “Great Recession of 2008-2009” also apparently played a role in creating the late 1990s dot-com/telecom industry bust. For example, according to the 2004 book by Roger Lowenstein, Origins of the Crash:

“Gary Winnick, the architect of Global Crossing, a transoceanic fiber developer, was the most brazen of the bandwidth barons and, indeed, operated on a grand scale reminiscent of the original robber barons…

“Working from an opulent Beverly Hills headquarters, whose inner sanctum was modestly designed to resemble the Oval Office, Winnick borrowed billions…

“…The telecoms had a prodigious appetite for loans; moreover, the boom coincided with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which had separated underwriting from banking. Banks such as Chase Manhattan (soon to be J.P.Morgan Chase) were now thirsting to move into underwriting. With telecoms equally thirsting for cash, banks used loans as bait to get the inside track on underwriting assignments, the precise abuse that Glass-Steagall had been intended to prevent. As Julie Creswell later revealed in Fortune, Chase was a notorious offender. It not only cut its fees to worm its way into banking deals; it courted Winnick…by introducing him to David Rockefeller, Chase’s former chairman…Rockefeller escorted Winnick…on a private tour of the Museum of Modern Art. By such means, Chase became Global’s banker and, indeed, the telecom industry’s commercial banker of choice. There is no evidence that the bank of David Rockefeller was overly concerned with whether demand for bandwidth was truly insatiable or—in the event it was not—with how its loans would be repaid…In 1999, Global showed earnings of $10 million—before, that is, Global’s interest expense of $92 million. No banker—no genuine banker—would lend on the basis of such numbers, suggesting mightily that Chase and the rest were scrambling after fees—were, that is, risking their shareholders’ capital in order to book short-term profits…”

`William Z. Foster'

(verses)
"My father was a Fenian who fled from British tyranny
And overseas he brought me up to fight for Ireland to be free
I saw the bosses' cruelty when I entered the working-class
And vowed I'd fight for a new world until I breathed my last.

"I hoboed all around the land and worked on ships at sea
I saw the sailors' suffering and felt police brutality
With migrant workers I did roam, in search of a day's pay
And organized union locals wherever I did stay.

(chorus)
"William Foster is my name
And I fight with heart and mind
And today we march to City Hall
For the rights of the Unemployed.

(verses)
"From Seattle to Chicago, the unorganized I did approach
And those ignored by the A.F.L. were the workers to whom I gave some hope
In the stockyards and the steel cities, I planned the big campaigns
And the Great Steel Strike after the World War, for steelworkers showed the way.

"To fight the Corporate Slave System, the CP I did join
And as their candidate for President, warned `millions will be unemployed'
And now we're here in Union Square, to say to the corporate rich
`There are no jobs, so we demand unemployment insurance~' (chorus)

"One hundred thousand strong today, yet still there is no permit to march
`Six months in jail,' they threaten me, and say I'm `inciting to riot'
And the New York cops, I see them charge, and club without mercy
But the Working Class will rise again until we win our victory." (chorus)

The William Z. Foster biographical protest folk song was written a few years ago and can be sung to the tune of the traditional Irish rebel folk song, "The Boys of Wexford."

To listen to some other protest folk songs, you can check out the following music site links:

http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music


http://www.mp3.com/artist/bobafeldman/songs/