Shares of McClatchy stock hit their lowest price in a couple decades Friday, reducing the market cap of the nation’s third largest publisher of newspapers to about $900 million.

That is a stop-the-presses number. Ten years ago, McClatchy paid one and a half times that amount for just one newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which it is has since sold.

McClatchy’s stock price fell more than 70 percent in 2007. If the trend continues, it won’t be long before one of the company’s most valuable assets will be the land and facilities it owns in fast-growing urban areas like Sacramento, Miami, Charlotte, Kansas City and Fort Worth.

Will Par Ridder ever be publisher again?

In June, we pondered whether Dean Singleton was going soft. His suit against Par Ridder sought to remove Ridder as publisher of the rival Star Tribune for only a year.

We argued that someone who stole confidential information, as Ridder admitted, should never be allowed in a publisher’s chair again. Ridder was publisher of the Pioneer Press in St. Paul before jumping to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.