September 14, 1998, Issue: 700
Section: InformationWeek500
Technology On The Front Page -- Publisher Knight Ridder Sees IT, And The Web, As An Enormous Opportunity To Expand Its Business
Bob Violino
Stop the presses! The No. 1 company in this year's InformationWeek 500 is Knight Ridder; like other newspaper publishing and new-media organizations, it views the role of IT as an enormous opportunity to expand its business.
"Taking advantage of information technology is absolutely critical to our success," says Tony Ridder, CEO of the $2.9 billion media empire, the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, following Gannett Co. Inc.
Knight Ridder has been a Web pioneer, and its online business continues to grow rapidly. Among its major milestones: Knight Ridder published the first complete online newspaper when the San Jose Mercury News debuted on America Online in May 1993. The Mercury News was also one of the first newspapers on the Web when the Mercury Center was launched in December 1995. Knight Ridder was the first customer of Mosaic Communications (now Netscape), in October 1994, and in 1996 became the first major newspaper group to publish all of its newspapers online.
The publisher, which is moving from Miami to San Jose, Calif., uses the Internet to buy much of its hardware and software, and runs many of its business applications-decision support, online analytical processing or data mining, and order entry-on its corporate intranet. More than three of four employees have desktop access to data on enterprise-class servers, and Knight Ridder is a heavy user of object technology for application development.
In May, Ridder hired David Starr, the former CIO at Reader's Digest Association Inc. and at ITT Corp., to lead Knight Ridder's IT operations. When he announced internally that Starr would be the first CIO at the company to report directly to him, Ridder says, "people around the organization could see that it clearly signified the importance of IT in our company."
Technology Breaks The News
Knight Ridder is using data warehousing and mining to gather demographic information on readers. In print publishing, it's using the latest in electronic pagination systems so editors can make rapid, last-minute changes in page layouts, photos, and articles. "We're competing with TV and radio," Starr says. "We need to make it more compelling to read newspapers."
But company executives are most excited about the World Wide Web. "There are so many new opportunities for us online-that's where a lot of money is going to be made," Ridder says. Indeed, Knight Ridder is using the Web to give readers access to its 31 daily and 18 weekly newspapers, to sell goods and services, to run classified ads, and to gather demographic data. It plans to produce Web directories and is looking for ways to expand its already large presence in online classified advertising.
In January, Knight Ridder launched a branding campaign designed in part to boost its name recognition online. It chose the name Real Cities as an umbrella for its 40-plus Web sites, all operated by the company's new-media division. The group is continuously adding new sites.
In June, Knight Ridder-with help from software developer IsoQuest Inc.-created an application for Web classified ads that uses an object database. In July, the company developed Passport, a user-registration and personalization software that uses an object database from Object Design Inc. to collect data for personalized news and advertising. Others have shown interest in the software and Knight Ridder is considering making it commercially available, says Chris Jennewein, VP of technology and operations at the company's new-media division.
In addition, Starr says Knight Ridder has its year 2000 concerns under control. "Everything we need to be working will work," he says. As for the IT skills shortage, Starr hopes Knight Ridder's move to San Jose will help lure more people with IT and Web skills. "This move really fits with what we're doing," Starr says. "The future is digital."
Copyright r 1998 CMP Media Inc.
Nice to see that Knight Ridder might become an ODIS VAR by reselling its online edition software...
Regards,
Gustave. |
