Miami-based media company Knight Ridder says it will move its headquarters to California's Silicon Valley to be closer to the information technology industry.
"There is no doubt that some of the best thinking about the future of the information business is in Silicon Valley," company chairman Tony Ridder said in a statement Tuesday. "As a news and information company, we want to stay very close to developments related to this new medium."
The company said it will move about a third of its 150 employees in Miami, where it operates its flagship newspaper, the Miami Herald, to California, where it owns a number of daily newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News. The move will be completed sometime in early 1999, Knight Ridder said.
Knight Ridder has not decided where the new corporate headquarters will be located, but it is expected to be somewhere between San Francisco and San Jose, spokesman Polk Laffoon said.
The Knight Ridder New Media unit, which leads the company's online efforts, including the pioneering Mercury Center, is already in San Jose.
Knight Ridder, the United States' second-largest newspaper publisher behind Gannett Company Inc., puts out 31 daily papers and maintains 33 associated Web sites under the Knight Ridder Real Cities name.
