Tax benefit lifts Knight Ridder earnings results. 

By the Associated Press - Knight Ridder Inc., the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, reported an 11 percent increase in third quarter earnings October 14 due mainly to a one-time tax gain. 

The San Jose, Calif.-based publisher, whose newspapers include The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer, earned $76.9 million in the three months ending Sept. 26, up from $69.1 million in the comparable period a year ago. 

Per-share earnings came in at 99 cents versus 85 cents a year ago. Excluding the 11-cent-per-share effect from the tax gain, per-share earnings were 88 cents, a penny ahead of the estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call. 

Revenues at the company rose 2 percent to $722.2 million from $707.2 million a year ago. 

Advertising revenues at the company rose 3 percent in the quarter, including a 4.3 percent gain in both September and August. 

Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder said in a statement that all of the company's large-market papers did well in the period with the exception of Miami, which was hurt by the effect of the three hurricanes that hit in September. There, ad revenues were down 4.4 percent in September and 1.7 percent in the quarter. 

Knight Ridder also reported that CareerBuilder, a combined print and online recruitment service it owns along with Gannett Co. and Tribune Co., kept its lead over Monster.com and HotJobs.com, averaging 13.8 million unique visitors in each month during the quarter, up 112 percent over the same period last year. Last year CareerBuilder signed partnerships with the Web portals AOL and MSN, replacing Monster. 

For the first nine months of the year, Knight Ridder earned $219.1 million or $2.76 per share, up from $197 million or $2.41 per share in the year-ago period. Revenues rose 2 percent to $2.19 billion from $2.15 billion.