KNIGHT, JOHN S.

born Oct. 26, 1894, Bluefield, W.Va., U.S. died June 16, 1981, Akron, Ohio in full John Shively Knight widely respected American journalist and publisher who developed the Knight Newspapers, one of the major newspaper chains in the United States. Knight's father moved to Akron to become advertising manager of the Akron Beacon Journal, a daily newspaper that he came to control some 15 years later. The younger Knight worked at the paper in summers as a child. He was educated in Akron and at a private school in Maryland. His college education at Cornell University was interrupted by World War I. After front-line army service in France, he was reluctant to enter journalism, but in 1920 he acceded to his father's wish and started as a sports reporter for the Beacon Journal, adopting a pseudonym because he was embarrassed at the poor quality of his work. In time he improved it beyond question; even as an eminent publisher later in life the quality of his occasional reporting was admired. Knight became the managing editor of the paper in 1925. When his father died in 1933 Knight took over as publisher and built on his father's foundation. He became a prize-winning editorial writer and an acquisitive publisher. Among the papers that he bought were the Miami Herald (1937), the Detroit Free Press (1940), the Chicago Daily News (1944), and the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer (1954). Knight sold the Daily News to Marshall Field in 1959, but even without it Knight Newspapers had a combined circulation of more than one million in 1960. Many of the Knight papers were frequent winners of awards for excellence. The Ridder newspaper chain and Knight Newspapers merged in 1974 to form the Knight-Ridder Newspapers group (later renamed Knight Ridder).