Knight Communications, Inc. history

Ridder expanded in 1926, acquiring the Journal of Commerce.

They paid $2.25 million for the Miami Herald in 1937.

In 1946, Miami Herald editor Lee Hills launched the Clipper Edition, a consolidated version of the newspaper that was distributed to several Latin American countries.

A fire destroyed the Miami newsprint warehouse in 1949.

That purchase was followed by four more in 1969: the The Philadelphia News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Macon Telegraph, and the Macon News.

In November of 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to form Knight-Ridder Newspapers, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States with 35 papers in 25 cities and a total daily circulation of 3.8 million and a Sunday circulation of 4.2 million.

Acquisitions in 1979 included Adams Inc., Fisher Publishing Inc., and Nittany Printing and Publishing Co.

Knight-Ridder diversified into cable television in 1981 via a joint venture with Denver, Colorado-based Tele-Communications Inc.

A pioneer in making information available online, Knight-Ridder launched an electronic library retrieval system, called VU/TEXT, in 1982.

Knight Communications was started in 1985, at the time of deregulation of the Bell company.

In 1991, Knight-Ridder and Tribune Co. formed a joint venture to electronically deliver business news to personal computer users.

Knight-Ridder sold its cable holdings back to TeleCommunications Inc. in 1996.

A major online advertising campaign began in January of 1998, when Knight-Ridder began developing its Real Cities series of regional information Web sites.

In November of 1999, Knight-Ridder folded the Internet-based operations of its daily newspapers into a new unit, dubbed KnightRidder.com.

To distance itself from the dot-com fallout, the firm changed the name of its KnightRidder.com unit to Knight-Ridder Digital in 2001.