Media Hegemonies

As I read through Chuck Klosterman’s pop culture novel “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” I realized he mentioned in the latter stages of his book a news company entitled Knight Ridder. Klosterman followed up by stating that he had “worked in the Knight Ridder chain for four years. “(Klosterman, 197) As a developing journalist, I decided it would be my best interest to look up this company in order to further my knowledge of the industry. What I learned was that Knight Ridder was a business fusion of Knight Newspapers Incorporated, and Ridder Publications, which combined in 1974. For a brief time this massive company was “the largest newspaper publisher in the United States” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder#Knight_Ridder-owned_companies). Upon further research I came to the realization that Knight Ridder had recently been bought out by The McClatchy Company, another newspaper publishing company. This media giant now owns a mass amount of daily, and weekly newspapers, as well as some other companies.

Aside from the 77 newspaper outlets throughout the U.S. owned by The McClatchy Company, also owned by them are; McClatchy Interactive, The Real Cities Network, and The McClatchy Washington Bureau. While this list seems fairly small, this company also has partial stakes in the McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, CareerBuilder, Classified Ventures, Ponderay Newsprint Company, The New York Times News Service, Scripps Howard News Service, The Seattle Times Company, and Topix.net. What seems unique to me is that the head bosses at McClatchy Interactive seem to have no problem keeping themselves in the print news business, and seem to not have much interest outside of purchasing news related companies. This would be key in keeping their company void of media cross ownership charges, which prevent multi-million dollar companies from owning “too much local media ownership”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_ownership). The Federal Communications Commission generally does not allow one type of media outlet to own its sister company. A plain example would be the Chicago Tribune’s ownership of WGN Radio (WGN-AM) and Television (WGN-TV). In my opinion this seems like a good general rule, when it comes to keeping some sort of diversity among news outlets in any given area.

As I tend to be business illiterate this whole media hegemony caught me by surprise. I guess it was fairly naïve of me to think that each newspaper I read is a private operating business at the top of its own chain when it comes to ownership. I suppose I should have taken Klosterman’s words to heart when he bluntly stated, “Massive conservative corporations own everything.”(Klosterman, 196) I guess from now on whenever I am reading a publication from the United States I will now realize that it’s most likely one of the 77 and counting owned by The McClatchy Company.

"Knight Ridder." Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder#Knight_Ridder-owned_companies

"Cross Ownership." Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_ownership

Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.