73. The Sale of Knight Ridder (2006)

In 2006 newspaper company McClatchy purchased Knight Ridder, the nation’s second largest newspaper publisher up until that point, for $4.5 Billion.

Knight Ridder had 32 daily papers, 12 of which were immediately sold off by McClatchy to reduce the debt that the company took on during the purchase.

Unfortunately for Gary Pruitt’s company, less than a year later the bottom would fall out of advertising and subscriber numbers for the entire industry would begin to dive.

To put things in perspective, Knight Ridder agreed to the sale after it’s stock price fell from $80 a share in 2004 to $52 dollars a share before it was sold; McClatchy, since the acquisition of Knight Ridder, has seen its share price fall from $41.60 in June of 2006 to $.44 in July of this year.

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