Knight Ridder Announces Three Executive Appointments
December 15 2004 - 2:30PM
PR Newswire (US)
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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