The company originated with The Daily Bee, first published in Sacramento, California, on February 3, 1857, by Native American writer Rollin Ridge.

Known as a supporter of the people's interests against corporations and corrupt politicians, McClatchy made The Bee a bastion of progressive reformism.

McClatchy also acquired then-ABC affiliate KOVR, licensed to Stockton, California but also serving the Sacramento area, from Metromedia in 1965.

This purchase added 20 newspapers to the company stable and the immediate sale (over the next five weeks) of 12 publications including the St. Paul Pioneer Press, San Jose Mercury News and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

[7] The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, acquired in 1998 and sold in 2007 to the private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $555 million, had the highest circulation of all McClatchy newspapers.

Forman, a private investor and McClatchy board member, succeeded Patrick Talamantes, who was CEO the previous four years.

[11][12][13] In August 2020, the Court approved an offer by Chatham Asset Management—a hedge fund that also owns a 66% share in Canadian publisher Postmedia—to acquire McClatchy for $312 million.

[14][15] On July 11, 2023, McClatchy laid off the editorial cartoonists of three of its newspapers, Kevin Siers at The Charlotte Observer, Jack Ohman at The Sacramento Bee, and Joel Pett at the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Between the announced purchase of Knight Ridder in March 2006 and late 2009, the stock value of McClatchy (MNI) declined significantly.

[26] McClatchyDC is a news agency that distributes original reporting from McClatchy's Washington, D.C. bureau, which was acquired from Knight Ridder.

[26] In 2008, McClatchy's bureau chief in D.C., John Walcott, was the first recipient of the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, awarded by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

One important reason was that we sought out the dissidents, and we listened to them, instead of serving as stenographers to high-ranking [Bush administration] officials and Iraqi exiles.

[31] On August 4, 2013, McClatchy Newspapers, citing anonymous sources, reported on conversations between Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an alleged imminent terrorist attack.

Two days previously, The New York Times had agreed to withhold the identities of the Al Qaeda leaders after US intelligence officials claimed the information could jeopardize their operations.

Government analysts and officials interviewed by the Times said this disclosure caused more immediate damage to American counter-terrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden; after the McClatchy publication, there was a sharp drop in the terrorists' use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring.