Gary Pruitt Quotations

We're a mass medium ... The best way to be relevant is to reflect the community and serve it well.

This puts us back in the breaking news business and back into the continuous news mode.

Newspapers are not dying. That's just wrong, and we are going to prove it wrong together.

Newspapers are holding on to their national audiences better (than other media), but the negative side is we're more difficult to buy. The industry is aware of it.

Given the company's small amount of debt relative to its cash flow, this is a good time to return cash to our shareholders.

I think you can expect a more robust and interactive Web site here at The Herald.

I think the best-case scenario, we will design the park next year and break ground on park construction in 2007,

Our local competitors have fragmented audiences. As a result, we're the last mass medium. We're holding onto that audience better than anybody else, albeit it's slipping slowly each year.

The 11.5 times multiple -- which is two full turns higher than the 9.5 times multiple we paid for the whole of Knight Ridder -- demonstrates that these are strong newspapers with great value to companies whose strategies fit them.

We can't change a market, but we can change a newspaper.

We care who we sell to, and we care about these papers. We are sorry that we're not retaining them and that they don't fit, but they will fit other companies' strategies.

We do think that retail will continue its sluggish performance and we're working hard to make sure that we're getting more smaller ads in the newspapers to make up for that,

We plan to maintain, sustain and further the journalism at these newspapers.

We are having a good fourth quarter, which has led us to raise our estimates of full-year earnings for 1999.

We don't know how these will be sold or the exact structure. ... We have begun marketing these papers today. We have received inquiries already.

The conventional wisdom is that newspapers are dead. That's the view out there, but it couldn't be more wrong.

Finding the right home for these papers has been a high priority for us since the announcement that we would be selling 12 of the Knight Ridder newspapers. This transaction highlights our ability to deliver quickly on our divestiture plan, and we are delighted with the sales price.

Finding the right home for these papers has been a high priority for us.

We see no reason to restate any circulation numbers reported by the Star Tribune,

We expect each of our papers to get better every year and work toward becoming the best in the company of its size.

These are terrific publications but simply do not fit with our long- standing acquisition and operating strategies.

Definitely we have the view of the newspaper being the core, as far out as we can project.

December advertising, which was down one per cent, resulted in fourth-quarter results below our expectations.

You're the last mass medium here. Everything else is fragmenting.

Football, soccer, rugby, lacrosse are going to probably be the priorities from an athletic facility standpoint,

It's possible that (contract farming) could go another year.

I know what the conventional wisdom is. We hear it all the time: Newspapers are dead. That's all we hear. ... That's just wrong, it really is wrong.

We are generally pleased that we were able to report a solid quarter in a tough advertising environment,.

Christmas was on a Sunday in 2005, which had a greater than expected negative impact on retail and classified advertising during the last weekend of our fiscal year. In addition, our California papers had held up well in automotive advertising, but the industry-wide decline in this category reached them in the fourth quarter as well.

Advertising spending continues to be somewhat choppy in our markets, but we do not view December's results as indicative of a trend in advertising performance going forward.

It's created a very real chilling effect among our sources. They've become nervous about talking with us. They don't want their phone numbers associated with us. And government employees who previously routinely talked to us, now won't.

These are high quality papers, they're doing well, and we expect to sustain and further their journalism.

You've got the biggest newsroom, the biggest advertising sales staff, the biggest local presence.

The markets we're retaining have a leg up. They are growing at a quicker rate, and with that economic growth comes more readers, more advertisers. The rising tide tends to lift all ships.