Walter T. Ridder; Longtime Newsman

Walter T. Ridder, 72, a former member of the Knight-Ridder Inc. board of directors whose newspaper career spanned 50 years. After serving as a war correspondent in Europe during World War II--he covered the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Dachau in 1945--he ran the information service for the Marshall Plan in Paris and for many years headed the Ridder papers’ Washington bureau. He retired last year as a member of the Knight-Ridder board. He was the grandson of Hermann Ridder, who, as a German immigrant, started the publishing empire that grew to include 19 newspapers, radio and television stations by the time it merged with Knight newspapers in 1974. On Saturday in Washington after what was described only as a long illness.