PHOTO BY NOEL NEUBURGER The McClatchy Co. president, chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt rolls up his sleeves for the dirty work ahead: Guiding McClatchy through the “titanic downturn.” Advertisement



One of Gary Pruitt’s favorite hikes is the Half Dome Cables Route in Yosemite National Park. The 52-year-old president, chairman, and chief executive officer of The McClatchy Co. keeps photographs of himself and friends scrabbling up the steep granite incline on the desk in his Q Street office in Midtown Sacramento. Misty, subdued landscapes of Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall adorn an opposite wall, solemn windows looming over the rectangular granite meeting table where Pruitt and company plot the moves of the third largest newspaper chain in the country.

Those moves have taken on a deep sense of urgency as of late. Since Pruitt began engineering the risky, controversial purchase of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain three years ago, McClatchy’s price per share has plummeted nearly 90 percent. It’s as if the company clawed its way up the Cables Route, only to plunge down the 4800-foot precipice on the other side.

As this issue was going to press, Pruitt resigned from four trusts that control 80 percent of McClatchy’s voting stock, sparking speculation that the publicly traded company may go private—a move that would undoubtedly anger shareholders—with Pruitt cast as the fall guy.

Pruitt says that’s nonsense, but everyone’s waiting for the splat. However, Pruitt has defied the odds before. In a decade of industry decline and stiffening competition from the Internet, the boyish, charismatic CEO known to quote Rolling Stones lyrics charted a steady course to the top. Then the bottom fell out of the real-estate market, sucking McClatchy and the entire newspaper industry down with it. They’re already calling 2008 the year the newspaper died.

It is the worst year of Gary Pruitt’s life.

I first learned Pruitt was a Rolling Stones fan while researching a story I was writing about the Knight Ridder purchase. I’m three years younger, and happen to be a pretty big fan myself. I called him and asked a few obvious questions about the purchase, then changed the topic to the Stones. We ended up trading arcane facts about the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band for another 20 minutes. Every call after that’s been the same. Our love and knowledge of Stones lore provides a common mythology that transcends the fact that Pruitt heads the third largest newspaper corporation in the country and I work at the local alternative newsweekly.

Sacred though our bond may be, it was the only leverage I had to gain a live audience with the beleaguered chief executive. Wearing black boot-cut stretch jeans and an awesome Rolling Stones shirt I got off the clearance rack at Macy’s, I approached him at a Rotary Club luncheon four months ago. He was the scheduled speaker, standing tall, slim and athletic within a circle of silvery-haired Rotarians. I stepped into the circle and parted my black sport coat to display the shirt.

“Gary, I wore this just for you,” I beamed.

“Hey, that’s a cool shirt!”

How could he turn me down?

Actually, he canceled the first interview, which would have taken place the week after McClatchy ordered a nationwide, 10 percent across-the-board cutback, laying off 1,400 of its 14,000 employees. He thought my concept of setting the drama surrounding the company to the music of the Rolling Stones was interesting, but the timing wasn’t right. When we finally did meet last month, the timing still wasn’t right.

“I thought about the Rolling Stones theme; I enjoyed reading your e-mails,” he said. “But I was afraid if we tied it too closely to that, it may seem to make light of what is obviously a very serious situation. I didn’t want to appear to be taking it lightly, because I don’t.”

Which is a shame, because Pruitt’s Rolling Stones stories are much better than mine.

May the good Lord shine a light on you

Make every song the same,

your favorite tune.

—The Rolling Stones,

“Shine a Light,” Exile on Main Street

Pruitt first saw the Stones on his 15th birthday in 1972, when he camped out overnight to watch the band’s Fourth of July concert at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C.

“In that concert, you felt anything could happen, good or bad,” he recalled. “You did not feel like you or anyone else was in total control, which is thrilling but scary. You never have near that feeling at a concert now.”

Indeed. Nowadays, that thrill has been reserved for newspaper executives.

He caught the Rolling Stones 1975 tour at the Gator Bowl on the night he graduated from the University of Florida at the age of 18. He studied First Amendment law at UC Berkeley, and was hired as McClatchy’s in-house counsel in 1984. He took over the publishing helm at The Fresno Bee in 1991.

McClatchy had purchased a string of three medium-sized South Carolina dailies the previous year, and Pruitt’s fortunes rose with the company. In 1994, he was promoted to chief operating officer; by 1996, he was commanding the fleet as McClatchy’s CEO. Under his leadership, McClatchy’s stock continued to rise, and Wall Street took notice. The fact that Pruitt occasionally threw a little rock ’n’ roll into the mix at shareholder meetings didn’t hurt.

“Hey, at each annual meeting, we show our photography set to a song,” he enthused. “This year we did—they’re not always current!—'(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,’ by Elvis Costello. We did Jimmy Eat World, ‘Middle’; the New Radicals, ‘You Get What You Give.’ We did ‘Rockin’ in the Free World,’ Neil Young. Did the original ‘This Land is Your Land’ with Woodie Guthrie. Did some reggae songs. So yeah, our shareholders meetings are different in that respect.”

The industry was already in a decade-long decline, but McClatchy’s circulation and readership continued to climb, validating Pruitt’s belief that a firm commitment to quality journalism was essential to succeed. From the beginning, the company’s strategy had been to acquire newspapers in high-growth markets where no daily competition existed, and it paid off in higher net profits, a steadily rising price per share and more money for newsrooms.

“Our strategy has always been consistent with striving to be and achieving the status of leading local media company,” Pruitt said. “That means having the biggest audience, the most advertising revenue. What it takes to be the leading local media company has certainly changed over time, but our feeling is, if you pick your markets carefully and execute well, you should be able to do well over time.”