Profile of Gary Pruitt, McClatchy's Man Behind KR Deal

In September 2001, E&P published the first full-length profile of Gary Pruitt, CEO of the McClatchy Co. A little more than four years later, Pruitt has engineered the longshot purchase of much-larger Knight Ridder in a $4.5 billion deal.

Here is the 2001 cover story, which was entitled "Good as Gold." Pruitt already was known as something of a "golden boy," who was "charming... candid... self-effacing" but also a "bulldog."

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Gary Pruitt, head of the McClatchy Co., is nice even when he tries to tell you he's not so nice. "I don't shy away from making tough decisions," he says softly. "But there's no sense in trying to be a jerk." Indeed, Pruitt, 44, who became CEO of McClatchy at the ripe old age of 38, can be tenacious, despite his reputation for niceness, a bulldog who somehow seems to get his way without stepping on toes.

Meticulously prepared, Pruitt essentially willed McClatchy, dismissed at the time as too small, into the bidding for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1998. He and the company emerged — $1.4 billion and a lot of debt later — with a paper that shot past the flagship Sacramento Bee to become the chain's biggest, a bold, controversial move that propelled McClatchy from a regional to a national stage.

More recently, Pruitt gave his blessing, if not his input, to some tough front-page editorials in The Fresno Bee and The Modesto Bee — McClatchy's two central California papers — that implored U.S. Rep. Gary Condit (who hails from that area) to resign because, they said, he had violated the public's trust in the Chandra Levy matter. The editorials attracted national attention for their boldness in calling for the head of a moderate Democrat who long had won the backing of the moderately Democratic Bees.

"I did not play a role in changing the editorials or working with [the two papers] to come up with their position on Condit's resignation," says the boyish Pruitt, who rarely interferes with editorial issues. "However, I do think [the Bees] handled it well. I think the editorials were good."

The Condit editorials are typical of both McClatchy tradition and Pruitt's management style: Hire solid, skilled people — and give them a lot of rope.

Editors in Condit country "know best what kind of paper is appropriate for people in Modesto, not me here in Sacramento," Pruitt explains in his spotless, modern-appointed, blue-hued office in California's sleepy, tree-lined capital city, headquarters of the McClatchy Co. "That doesn't mean I'm excluded or that other people here at corporate are. We all participate."

Dick LeGrand, The Modesto Bee's opinion page editor, says that, while he agonized over the details of the Condit editorial,