Brian Fuller’s blog on the state of media and communications

Ridder’s bookend

Posted on | June 27, 2006 | No Comments

It’s perhaps fitting that the end of the Ridder family’s involvement in publishing is probably capping an era in journalism.

Tony Ridder broke down Monday when shareholders approved his company’s sale to to McClatchy Co. I’d break down too in that situation. But it’s symbolic on one key level. Ridder’s grandfather, Herman, started the company in the 1890s, when newspapers were the ascendant media form. The linotype machine had just begun to make production much easier, the telegraph had been making distant dispatches easy and the telephone was speeding up the process of news gathering.

Today, the business is in upheaval and the Ridder story—one family riding a hundred-year wave in printed media—is a bookend. Or as we write at the ends of our stories, -30-.

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