Back in the 1940s James McClatchy would sometimes take his dates to the sky. He kept a single-engine plane at Palo Alto Airport while he was a Stanford student, his son William explains. The appeal? It was exciting and a bit exotic. “He flew them around and tried to get a kiss out of them, I am sure,” William, ’84, says with a laugh.
McClatchy, the former publisher and board chair of the McClatchy Company, one of California’s pre-eminent newspaper chains, died May 26 at his home in Carmichael, Calif., after complications from outpatient surgery for lung disease. He was 85.
McClatchy was born in Sacramento. His newspaper lineage runs deep: his great-grandfather was the founding editor of the Sacramento Bee. His grandfather served as editor there for more than half a century. His father, Carlos Kelly McClatchy, was the founder and first editor of the Fresno Bee. A lecture series in Carlos McClatchy’s memory has brought journalists to the Farm since 1964 and a building in the Quad is named for him. James McClatchy’s brother, Charles “Chas,” ’50, served as editor and president of the McClatchy Company in the 1970s and 1980s.
McClatchy’s Stanford career was interrupted by Army Air Corps service during World War II; he returned after the war to finish his political science degree. After earning a master’s in journalism at Columbia University, McClatchy began work as a reporter for the Sacramento newspaper in 1947 and held various posts there, at the Fresno Bee, and at their parent company over the next six decades. In 1964 he left the company to buy and start a number of small newspapers in areas such as San Francisco, Marin County and Lake Tahoe. In 1980 he was named chairman of the board of the McClatchy Company and served alternately in that role and as publisher until his 2004 retirement. He approved of the company’s purchase this year of Knight Ridder, making McClatchy the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain.
Friends and family say they will remember his values and his vision. “He was one of those people who could take a small idea and see all the parts to it,” recalls his wife, Susan. “He could put all the parts together far beyond most people’s interest levels.”
One defining example: McClatchy’s work on the Declaration of Chapultepec. The statement of principles was born of a casual conversation between McClatchy, head of the Inter American Press Association, and a friend about the lack of a document protecting journalists’ freedom of speech throughout the Americas. Since the declaration was penned in 1994, it has been signed by 29 heads of state and thousands of politicians, writers and others. “He saw how it could be used in Latin America,” says Susan McClatchy, adding that governments have used it as a framework when writing their constitutions. “It’s an incredibly important document. They just didn’t let this die.”
In addition to his wife and his son William, McClatchy is survived by his son Carlos and a brother, William, ’46.
