Knight Ridder Announces Three Executive Appointments SAN JOSE, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Knight Ridder today announced three executive appointments: Paula Lynn Ellis, currently president and publisher of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, will become a corporate vice president/operations, with responsibility for 11 of the company's newspapers. Those newspapers are located in: Aberdeen, S.D., Belleville, Ill., Columbia, S.C., Duluth, Minn., Fort Wayne, Ind., Grand Forks, Minn., Myrtle Beach, S.C., State College, Pa., Tallahassee, Fla., Wichita, Kan., and Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Ricky Mathews, currently president and publisher of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, will assume oversight responsibility for three additional newspapers. Those newspapers are located in Bradenton, Fla., and in Columbus and Macon, Ga. Chip Visci, who has served as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News throughout 2004, will become publisher of The Tribune in San Luis Obispo with oversight responsibility for The (Monterey County) Herald as well. All will report to Knight Ridder Senior Vice President Art Brisbane. Ellis will operate out of San Jose. Mathews will remain in Biloxi. Visci will be headquartered in San Luis Obispo. The appointments are effective by year's end. Maureen Saltzer, who has served as publisher of The Tribune since June 14, is pursuing other opportunities. In making the announcement, Brisbane said, "This is a win-win-win for all involved. Together, our mid-sized and smaller newspapers will be reporting to three individuals bringing tremendous knowledge of the business and depth of experience to the task. Each of the three is also well-known for effectively mentoring others throughout our operations. The result will be greatly enhanced support for this important segment of our newspaper division. "Paula Ellis, who joined Knight Ridder in 1980, has an outstanding editorial and business background, serving in both our Washington Bureau and as managing editor of The State in Columbia before moving to the business side there and becoming publisher of The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News in 1997. In a highly competitive market, she is currently seeing double-digit ad revenue growth and circulation growth. Under Paula's leadership, the newspaper has won the coveted Alvah H. Chapman Benchmark Award twice. "Ricky Mathews is a 23-year veteran of The Sun Herald, rising from summer intern to publisher, and he has served on two key Knight Ridder corporate initiatives: the re-engineering core team in the 1994 and the management initiative in the current year. A 'go-to' person for others throughout the company, he is also deeply involved in community activities. His new role is a natural marriage of Ricky's experience with three other southern markets of a size and complexity much like Biloxi's. "Chip Visci has a distinguished record in both editorial and business operations. A former managing editor of the Detroit Free Press, he spent seven of the last eight years on the corporate staff, two of them with responsibility for 16 of the company's mid-sized and smaller newspapers. Chip is energetic, competitive and widely admired -- he will be a great asset to these two important California newspapers." From 1990 to 1997, Ellis, 50, was assistant to the publisher, managing editor and assistant managing editor at The (Columbia) State. Prior to that, she worked as an editor in Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau. She started with the company in 1980 as business editor at The Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind. Earlier, she had held reporting jobs at four different newspapers. Ellis is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a B.A. in government and politics, and from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, with a master's degree in journalism. She holds membership in numerous professional organizations and serves on a variety of local cultural and civic boards. For the past three years, she has chaired the national advisory board of The Poynter Institute. She is married, with four stepchildren and 12 step-grandchildren. Mathews, 47, has held various positions in the newspaper's advertising, circulation, production, operations and marketing departments and was vice president/marketing director when named publisher in 2001. He is a graduate of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi, where he earned an M.B.A. He is married with three children. Visci, 51, joined the Detroit Free Press in 1978 as a copy editor and reporter. Over the years, he held a variety of editing positions. Visci earned a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University and an M.A. from Ohio State University. He is married to Marty Claus, a recruiting and training consultant for Knight Ridder. Knight Ridder is the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, with products in print and online. The company publishes 31 daily newspapers in 28 U.S. markets, with a readership of 8.7 million daily and 12.6 million Sunday. Knight Ridder also has investments in a variety of Internet and technology companies and two newsprint companies. The company's Internet operation, Knight Ridder Digital, develops and manages the company's online properties. It is the founder and operator of Real Cities (http://www.realcities.com/), the largest national network of city and regional Web sites in more than 100 U.S. markets. Knight Ridder and Knight Ridder Digital are headquartered in San Jose, Calif. DATASOURCE: Knight Ridder CONTACT: Polk Laffoon, Vice President/Corporate Relations, +1-408-938-7838, or , or Lee Ann Schlatter, Director/Corporate Communications, +1-408-938-7839 or Web site: http://www.knightridder.com/

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