I’ve got good news — for me. I think it’s good news for you and all readers of The State as well. CEO Gary Pruitt and two other top McClatchy executives visited the paper this afternoon, and they said all the right things.

I wasn’t taking notes, but here is the gist: McClatchy believes in hiring good people and leaving them alone to run their newspapers. This is great to hear because we’ve already got good people here, and  there is no more important value in this business than local autonomy.

That’s the way Knight Ridder ran — or didn’t run — things when I joined it in 1985. That gradually became less so over the years, as the company was battered about by unrealistic expectations on Wall Street. It’s still a better newspaper company than many, just not as tremendous as it was.

I will say this for Tony Ridder and KR, though: They never broke their promise about preserving editorial independence of the papers. They started meddling here and there with most of the other executives — publishers, ad directors, etc. — but they left me alone. (And that’s what counts, right?)

The best part of the general employee meeting was when Mr. Pruitt asserted, strongly and eloquently, his own belief in editorial independence. I liked it so much that when he and the others met privately with the executive staff later, I asked him to say it again. He did, and I then sat back and shut up; I had no other questions. (I believe a videotape of the broader meeting exists. I intend to get the exact quotes, and hang onto them.)

I had been slightly worried because I had heard a rumor to the contrary (and I couldn’t check it out because, until the sale is final, we’re not supposed to have any contacts with McClatchy folks not pre-approved by KR, which still owns us). And indeed, once upon a time, when it was a smaller company, there was a certain amount of editorial coordination (I guess that’s what you’d call it) among the California papers in the group. I am reassured that that is not the case today, and apparently has not been corporate policy since the mid-90s, when Mr. Pruitt became the top guy.

While it might be counter-intuitive to people in other lines of work (based on the kinds of questions I get all the time), people who understand the newspaper business understand that it is a local business, and the quickest way to lose credibility is to have your editorial stances change according to the whim of a bunch of pezzonovantes off in some corporate office.

The new boss used an analogy that I’ve used a number of times in the past to explain the importance of editorial consistency: We are like the court system; we respect precedent. You might have a new publisher or a new editorial page editor once in a blue moon, but in making decisions, those folks and the others on a local editorial board should respect the vote of the paper itself as an ongoing, living entity — a quintessentially local entity that can’t be fully understood outside the community. As you might expect — but that made it no less good to hear — this philosophy was also endorsed by VP for News Howard Weaver (another of our visitors today, along with new operations VP Lynn Dickerson).

On a related note, I spoke to a lunch meeting of the West Wateree-Lugoff Rotary today. I had been asked "to come talk to our club about the recent developments with Knight Ridder and McClatchy newspapers." So that’s what I did. Here’s the text of my speech
— or rather, the notes from which I spoke. Although it’s written mostly in complete sentences, I quit reading it after the first few paragraphs — but stuck to the basic thrust.

I could have told those folks a lot more about the future of The State under McClatchy if they had asked me to speak tomorrow instead of today. In any case, the hopes I expressed in what I did say were borne out by what the McClatchy folks said this afternoon.

Of course, in the newspaper business, we have a saying: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." So we have yet to see whether encouraging words are backed up by reality. We won’t know that until after the sale is final, which will be sometime in July or later. And truth be told, you can find bad news within McClatchy if you look hard. (But to me, the fact that the folks in charge in Minneapolis made one bad call just backs up what the honchos told us about local autonomy; McClatchy folks are apparently free to screw up — to a point, anyway).

I’m not normally a guy to say good things about any kind of corporate types. To put it another way, there is a reason why my boss made me move to the opposite end of the table from where Gary Pruitt was to sit before he came in for the senior staff meeting (to steal a line from a certain other blogger, I am not making this up).But for me, right at this moment, I’m feeling as good about the new company as I’m ever likely to feel about such a thing. It’s not as good as owning the paper myself, but it’s good.

It’s not just the thing about local autonomy; it’s the way they explained why they have such an approach. They showed that they get it. That is a fine and rare thing, so pardon me while I savor it.

Oh, one last thing: I neglected to ask the new jefe which was his favorite Ramone. Maybe next time.

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