Knight-Ridder

KR, once known as the Cadillac of newspaper chains for its relative fairness to workers and its journalistic integrity, still hasn't recovered from a series of public relations blunders, not the least of which are:

It, along with Gannett, waged a vicious, bitter and dishonest campaign in the mid-1990s during a destructive lockout of workers in Detroit that has left both local papers demoralized, their circulation perhaps permanently wounded. The corporate attitude toward workers there and the community in general has set the corporate tone for all that has followed in the last few years.

Distancing itself from investigative reports in its Akron and San Jose newspapers that, while problematic, were not the horrors management painted, and it even paid off the Chiquita corporation, even though findings in its investigative report were not disproved.

Downsized many of its newspapers to such a degree that its editor at its now-flagship newspaper quit in protest.

Insulted its longtime HQ town of Miami by moving its corporate headquarters to the Silicon Valley in what turned out to be a rather chaotic way and with little regard for the way this looked to the communities it said it served.

Has gone through rancorous labor disputes at its San Jose, Seattle and other properties, including the former Long Beach paper (where it basically shut out the Guild from bidding on the paper as part of an employee-stock ownership plan).

Abused its own workers at its Monterey, Calif., paper, which it took over a few years ago the way a bully pushes a small child off a bicycle.

The list of injuries goes on, and with little apology or recognition from the corporate honchos. (The abuses at the Long Beach Press-Telegram are now history, as KR abandoned that and many other papers in the past few years, but the memory of them remains -- and continues to be indicative of the new corporate philosophy.)