In the past few weeks, both The Minneapolis Star Tribune and The St. Paul Pioneer Press have been doing a bang-up job of covering a dramatic civil trial that has taken aim at one of the Twin Cities’ leading businessmen.
The trial, and the accompanying coverage, has been full of allegations of bad faith, stolen data and riveting hallway commentary.
Oops, I buried the lead: the businessman is Par Ridder, former publisher of The Pioneer Press who left in March to become publisher of The Star Tribune.
Ridder, 39, the scion of the Ridder newspaper family, was the publisher of The St. Paul Pioneer Press when it was owned by Knight Ridder. It was sold to McClatchy, which also owned The Star Tribune.
McClatchy then sold both papers - The Pioneer Press to MediaNews Group, a group of papers controlled by William Dean Singleton, and The Star Tribune to Avista Capital Group, a private equity group.
In March, Par Ridder left The Pioneer Press and went to its competitor across the river, and it is alleged that he took a few things with him, including a laptop containing extensive proprietary financial data, and, after a few weeks, a few key executives.
In a civil suit, MediaNews alleged he violated noncompete agreements personally and by hiring others from the paper, that he removed those agreements from the newspaper’s files, and that he disseminated competitive financial data to other executives at his new posting.
Back in May, Par Ridder told me in a phone interview that he was unable to address the specifics of the allegation, but that the matters would become much clearer when the facts came out during a hearing. That took place the week of June 25.
He was right about things becoming clear.
In a hearing at which MediaNews Group sought a temporary injunction to prevent him from continuing to work for The Star Tribune, he acknowledged most allegations of fact against him. Ridder had taken 18 to 20 Excel spreadsheets from The Pioneer Press, including marketing and advertising documents.
At least four executives at The Star Tribune said that they had seen the data, including the chief financial officer.
Ridder acknowledged that he had signed a noncompete agreement, but said that he had been released from his commitment by Arthur Brisbane, a Knight Ridder executive (who testified that he did not recall the conversation).
“This is simply about right and wrong,” Singleton said. “There does not appear to be any dispute about what Par did. He admits stealing the information, and he admits violating the no-compete.”
On the day Ridder announced he was leaving The Pioneer Press, his secretary said she would take the noncompete documents home and shred them.
Ridder, after consulting with a former Knight Ridder official - P. Anthony Ridder, his father - thought better of it and tracked her down in the parking garage and took custody of the documents himself and preserved them. The senior Ridder said in his videotaped testimony that his son “had full authority” to waive the agreements without other approvals.
The defense the Star Tribune’s lawyers mounted was based on what Par Ridder was trying to take. Ridder said he had no intention of using the competitive information. He wanted only the Excel templates he had developed.
MediaNews lawyers disagreed. “It’s as if you had the secret formula to Coca-Cola, and you took it to Pepsi,” they said.
Closing arguments are due next Monday and a decision on the temporary injunction will come by late summer.
In a phone call, OhSang Kwon, one of the partners in Avista, said that although Ridder may or may not have been guilty of poor judgment, he did not operate unethically and Avista had no intention of firing him or other former Pioneer Press employees.
“Par Ridder maintains our confidence going forward,” Kwon said. “We are the defendants in this case. This is not our lawsuit.”
When confronted in his deposition with the fact that he had gone to work for a competitor, and not only lifted data, but hired two people who had noncompetes, it seemed that life outside the family bubble left him baffled. (Ridder returned a call, but was not able to speak on the record until the case is resolved.)
It was as if a scion of a publishing family, born on third base, decided to steal it anyway. In the process, he has managed to make Singleton, a no-holds-barred newspaper owner, appear sympathetic.
But what may look like a local dustup does carry a broader message. In media, there is a huge and very real wall between the product and the business side of a company. Whether or not owners observe that barrier has become the big hurdle in Rupert Murdoch’s pursuit of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, for example.
While both papers have done an amazing job covering the trial, The Star Tribune has demonstrated anew that some newspapers live the rule of church and state with its coverage of its own publisher. Avista executives said they feel they’ve gotten a fairer shake from The Pioneer Press than the newspaper they bought for $530 million.
But even if the wall between corporate and reporters has protected the independence of the journalism, it is not as if Par Ridder’s behavior has not reflected on the journalists who report for the paper.
In a June 30 column by Kate Parry, the Star Tribune reader’s representative, reporters pointed out that it was pretty hard to hold other entities to account when their publisher seemed to some to be a poster child for a breach of business ethics.
Reporting on the Minneapolis Veterans Home that had faced a series of regulatory problems, Warren Wolfe asked an official there if the home was now in compliance.
“I don’t know,” the official replied. “Is your publisher?”
The focus on the behavior of the leadership at The Star Tribune does raise an additional question about a Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. Even if the editorial safeguards that the Bancroft family have negotiated help maintain the independence and rigor of the reporting there, how many times will Murdoch or his business practices come up in the stories the paper is trying to report?
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