Earning My Salary

It's not easy being the manager of a major Minnesota paper. There's a lot of scrutiny. Reporters like to think they know everything about running a big business. They also like to report on me instead of reporting on the news.

Here's a blog report from the City Pages. It really an attack on me by reporter Mike Mosedale. He tells everyone how much I make, which is fine. I want people to know how much I make. But I also want people to know how hard it is to earn that much.

Working my way up from an account manager at the Washington Post to publisher in California to the publisher position at the Pioneer Press and then to the publisher position at the Star Tribune has not been easy. I didn't get the positions just because my dad is CEO and chairman of Knight Ridder, the company that owned and sold the Pioneer Press. It's because I've got experience, I'm from a publishing family, and I know how to publish a newspaper.

Making sure a major paper works as a business takes a lot of time and talent. And that's why I make as much as I do. Also, getting my start in newspaper advertising, I know about bringing in money to a newspaper. You've got to spend money to make money. And you've got to spend money on a good publisher to have a great paper.

That's what I'm building at the Star Tribune, a great paper.