CentreSquawker

A fond farewell to a hired gun

Tysen Kendig and I sit on opposite sides of the wall.

He's on the inside. He has an office in Penn State's Old Main.

I'm on the outside. I have a terribly cluttered desk in a well-worn newsroom in College Township.

My job is to get on the inside and report back. His job is to make the inside look good.

You'd think our rapport should be strained, tenuous and ugly.

Kendig is, after all, a spokesman and assistant director of public information for the university. Some might call him a hired gun.

I, as the Penn State reporter for the Centre Daily Times, don't always write nice things about the university. I'm "paid to be a spoiler," an editor once told me in jest.

I'm the David Sanger to Kendig's Tony Snow.

But that doesn't mean I can't give him credit where it's due.

Unfailingly, Kendig has been a tremendous help during his tenure at the university. He answers questions as sharply as reporters ask them. He's as fair to reporters as they are to him. He's insightful, thorough and complete without being condescending or instructive.

And he answers inquiries quickly and accurately. Hell, a 4 a.m. e-mail message to Kendig today yielded an informed response before 8 a.m.

So it's with some sense of mourning that I prepare for Kendig's departure. He and his family will leave Centre County soon so he can begin his new job. He'll be vice chancellor for university relations at the University of Arkansas.

There -- as we reported several weeks back -- he'll be hooking a six-figure salary.

Here's wishing you well, Tysen.

And thanks.

CDT has southern suitor

Suddenly, we find that we're a player in the ongoing chatter about Knight Ridder's fate.

The Centre Daily Times is among the 32 KR-owned dailies that are on the auction block this year, forced there by investors unhappy with KR's financial performance.

Until now, we'd seen nothing substantial to indicate who may be very specifically interested in buying the CDT.

But this weekend there arrived an in-depth report from the Lexington Herald-Leader. It says that a former commerce secretary in Kentucky is hoping to buy six KR papers that sit in college-town markets -- including the CDT.

CentreDaily.com's Midday Report first pointed out this tidbit yesterday. (Thanks go to Midday writer Matt Hymowitz, who's filling in this week for executive editor Bob Heisse.)

Earlier post: Uncertainty revisited: Mulling K. Ridder 

Update in March: New era dawns for CDT with sale

Expert: Return newspapers to local control

As Knight Ridder's future continues to hang in the balance, journalism guru Jay Rosen offers this intriguing idea:

What if the corporate monolith were to sell off its newspapers, including the Centre Daily Times, to local buyers and return the papers to local control?

As I've blogged before, Knight Ridder has owned the CDT since 1979. Before that, the paper was owned by locals.

Here's a question: Has the paper fared better under Knight Ridder control or under its previous ownership?

Feel free to comment.

Update @ 4:26 p.m.: Former CDT publisher Lou Heldman will remain in Wichita, Kan., putting off an anticipated move to South Carolina as Knight Ridder explores "strategic alternatives."

Reports: Knight Ridder mulls selling itself

Questions over the fate of Knight Ridder are bubbling over once more.

The New York Times reports this morning that the company -- which owns the Centre Daily Times -- has hired Goldman Sachs as a strategic adviser.

This after Knight Ridder's top investor called for the sale of the entire company.

Says The Times' headline today: "Knight Ridder to Explore Possible Sale."

What all this could mean for Knight Ridder's 31 32 daily newspapers remains unclear.

Knight Ridder has owned the Centre Daily Times since 1979.

Related: Read Knight Ridder's own press release. Or read The Miami Herald's story.

Update @ 12:01 p.m.: Read CEO Tony Ridder's memo to employees. Or read this BusinessWeek blog post about the news.

Nigro name inspires uneasy moments

So there we were, three very white newspaper reporters tucked into Bellefonte's Willowbank Building for a night of election-results reporting.

Not an hour into it, a pronunciation ordeal confronted us.

It went something like this:

Centre Daily Times Reporter No. 1: Um, that state Supreme Court justice (Russell M. Nigro). How do we pronounce his name?

CDT Reporter No. 2: Uhh. Nigh-grow. I think.

CDT Reporter No. 3: Yeah, go with that. Don't say knee-grow.

In our little clique, the situation may have been most awkward for CDT contributor Dan Victor, who was calling in results of the judge-retention ballot question to The Associated Press in New York. (The others among us were more immediately concerned with the municipal contests.)

Victor stuck with nigh-grow, though he said the phone-answerers in New York pronounced it both ways.

See, it's times like this when I'm really, really glad I'm not in broadcasting.

Update @ 3:16 p.m.: It's worth noting that while a majority of Pennsylvania voters moved Tuesday to oust Nigro, there was no such anti-Nigro majority in Centre County. See the results.

Press blacked out of the Renaissance

This may not be interesting to anyone except ink-stained wretches, but:

When reporters went to The Penn Stater on Thursday night to cover student demonstrators outside the Renaissance Fund dinner, they -- the reporters -- couldn't get into the dinner itself.

Penn State officials dubbed it a private event. Rene Portland, the subject of much controversy lately, was being honored there.

University spokesman Bill Mahon said in an e-mail message Sunday that any news media that had paid tickets would've been welcome to attend the formal function.

The last time the Centre Daily Times covered the Renaissance Fund dinner in person was in 2003, when reporter Lara Brenckle attended. She doesn't recall having had a paid ticket then. (The CDT, having limited staff resources, did not send a reporter to the dinner in 2004.)

The Daily Collegian covered the annual dinners live -- on scene -- in the 1990s, but seems to have stopped doing so in more recent years, its online library suggests.

Penn State's ban on media at last week's Renaissance Fund dinner extended to a photographer who was accompanying State College Mayor Bill Welch, himself a former Renaissance Fund honoree. The photographer with Welch was not part of the working press that night; rather, the photographer was working on a class project about Welch.

Welch explained that to university staffers at the event. Still, despite Welch's protestations, they declined to admit the photographer.

Mahon didn't indicate whether there's been a change in Penn State policy regarding press access to Renaissance Fund dinners.

This all has been the subject of much chatter among local reporters and local-media watchdogs in the past few days. Just throwing it out there.

Update @ 4:22 p.m.: Squawker's boss offers some additional perspective in his blog.

CDT parent company faces new pressure

Knight Ridder, the publicly traded company that owns the Centre Daily Times and more than 30 other U.S. newspapers, is under the gun.

Its largest shareholder, a group titled Private Capital Management, has called for the sale of the entire company, Jim Romenesko reports tonight.

Bottom line: PCM doesn't think Knight Ridder is pulling in enough profit or fetching a high-enough price per share, it seems.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, a Knight Ridder paper, has posted its own story.

To read PCM's letter to the Knight Ridder board, go here.

At least one threat is clear: If Knight Ridder doesn't make some substantial changes, PCM could lobby to install new corporate leadership at the California-based company.

Dan Rubin, a reporter and blogger at The Inquirer, just wrote a post about the news, too.

As Matt Drudge would say:

Impacting ...

Update @ 7:55 p.m.: The Associated Press has filed a report. Read The Wall Street Journal's coverage here.

Update @ 12:16 a.m.: The Financial Times is reporting on the story now. The New York Times article is here.

Update @ 11:43 a.m. Wednesday: Merrill Lynch analysts have weighed in on the likelihood that Knight Ridder will be sold, The Inquirer reports.

Ex-CDT'er Heldman heads back East

Former CDT publisher Lou Heldman, who left central Pennsylvania to lead The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle in 2002, is now bound for South Carolina.

The Eagle and The State -- the Columbia paper to which Heldman's headed -- both reported the news today.

The State is South Carolina's biggest paper. The Eagle, where Squawker and Front Row blogger Daniel Victor have completed internships, is Kansas' biggest paper.

They and the CDT are owned by Knight Ridder.