William Dean Singleton and his Denver-based MediaNews Group, which announced Friday it is buying the Salt Lake Tribune from telecom giant AT&T, are no strangers to the world of the newspaper joint operating agreement (JOA), which exists in 13 American cities.
As owner of the Tribune, MediaNews Group would step into a competitive/cooperative environment where the newsrooms of the Tribune and the rival Deseret News compete fiercely while the two papers' non-editorial operations are combined to eliminate redundant costs. The competitors jointly own the Newspaper Agency Corp., which handles the printing, advertising and circulation for both papers. The News-Tribune-Agency trio functions under provisions of a joint operating agreement, or JOA.
Ironically, Singleton found the arenas of cooperation and competition backward when he arrived in Salt Lake City Friday to announce the purchase from AT&T: He was barred from the Tribune newsroom while the management of the News said it welcomed Singleton as a business partner in the JOA. The JOA requires that the News approve of any transfer of assets involving the Newspaper Agency Corp.
Tribune management is trying to block the paper's sale to MediaNews Group.
Newspaper executives in three other markets where MediaNews Group owns a newspaper that is part of a JOA have nothing harsh to say about Singleton — either as a partner or competitor.
Dennis Hetzel is the editor and publisher of the York Daily Record, the morning daily newspaper in York, Pa. The Record competes with, and is, a JOA partner with the MediaNews-owned afternoon paper, the York Dispatch.
"I've heard Singleton say this and I think he's right — I think this JOA works the way they're supposed to work," Hetzel said "Our newsrooms compete tooth and nail. On a business level, they've been honorable and cordial."
Singleton's paper is the larger of the two and has ongoing control of the York Newspaper Co., the jointly owned JOA agency.
There have been "bumps in the road," Hetzel said, "But a lot of the problems with JOAs is the simple problem of getting three companies to work together."
Somewhat unique in the operating agreement between the York papers is an option Singleton has to buy out his competition in 2004.
York Daily Record owner Phil Buckner said his retirement plans led him to give Singleton the purchase option. "I'm in my 70s. I have three children — two doctors and an architect," Buckner said. "They aren't interested in following in Dad's footsteps, which is fine. So I had to make other plans for the paper, but it's not a foregone conclusion Dean (Singleton) will exercise that option."
Buckner bought the paper in 1978 and negotiated the JOA with Singleton in 1990. "There are no two JOAs alike. They have all been arranged uniquely," Buckner said. The success of a JOA "comes down to the quality of the management of the agency. Ours is run very well. It allows the papers to be competitive. It forces both papers to be competitive."
University of Missouri journalism professor Daryl Moen has studied JOAs for many years and includes some information about them in his curriculum. "Nobody wants an entire course on JOAs," he said.
Moen has a unique view of JOAs in the current regulatory environment, believing it is possible Singleton could use use a JOA to shut down the smaller paper in a given market through a friendly buyout.
"Why would they agree to it? Because financially, it becomes a whole different ball game in the future," Moen said. "I'll go out of business and you pay me for the next 50 years? Why should I bother to run the doggone newspaper if I'm going to get as much or more money than running the newspaper."
Moen calls the arrangement a "gracious exit for a failing paper" but doesn't see that scenario playing out in the Salt Lake City market.
Craig Selby, publisher of the Charleston Gazette in Charleston, W.Va., doesn't see a one-paper destiny in his market. His is a morning paper that is a JOA partner with the MediaNews-owned Charleston Daily Mail, the somewhat smaller afternoon paper. "Our agreement goes for probably another 25 years," Selby said. The jointly owned agency is run by an independent president and general manager, who reports to a management committee comprising two representatives from each paper.
"Here, the JOA has served the community very well," Selby said. "We've had a very good relationship since Dean (Singleton) purchased the Daily Mail" about two years ago. Singleton is visible in the operation but is not a micro-manager. "He visits. He's very interested. He'll pretty much leave (operations) to those who are running it and offer assistance."
The newest JOA contract Singleton has negotiated is on his home turf at The Denver Post, MediaNews Group's flagship newspaper, which recently struck an agreement with its statewide rival, The Rocky Mountain News.
Kirk MacDonald is president and CEO of the Denver Newspaper Agency, which is awaiting approval from the Justice Department before the JOA agency becomes a functioning entity.
Denver's JOA is structured most like the arrangement the Deseret News would like to see — and one at which the Salt Lake Tribune has already balked. The Denver JOA agreement puts in place an independent president and CEO who runs the agency and reports to a management committee comprised of two representatives each from MediaNews, owner of the Post, and E.W. Scripps Co., owner of the News.
The two papers take turns naming a chairman for the management committee, with the position alternating every four years. Singleton will be the first management committee chairman.
From his vantage at the University of Missouri, Moen predicts one of the Denver papers will disappear within five years. There was a time when federal regulators would not have allowed a JOA to be the conduit through which one voice in a two-newspaper market could disappear, Moen said, but regulators have become very liberal in eliminating existing JOAs and accommodating media mergers, the largest of which is the pending merger between AOL and Time-Warner.
Regulators "appear to have bought the argument that in today's media environment that it is less important to have two newspaper voices in the town because you have many more media voices generally, thanks to the Internet. And of course you've got a multiplicity of channels on cable and satellite," Moen said.
"You and I both know those additional voices seldom are local voices. They do not add anything to the coverage of local events and do not discuss local issues. Losing a newspaper is losing a coverage and a voice."
MacDonald believes Moen's prediction for the demise of one of the Denver papers to be "totally false."
"The operating agreement says 50 years," MacDonald said.
"Historically (JOAs) have had a morning paper and an afternoon paper. The afternoon paper, just due to readership trends, has typically declined in circulation, which then makes the morning paper the stronger paper."
MacDonald said similar circulation cycles and strong individual ownership will help the Denver JOA thrive.
"If and when approved, we would enter the JOA with two morning newspapers that are roughly equal in circulation; that both have strong, exclusive audiences and that have different formats — (the Post) a broadsheet and the other a tabloid," he said. "I think MediaNews and Scripps took great care in writing a joint operating agreement that gives this the chance to be uniquely successful."
Selby said having MediaNews enter the Salt Lake market as the owner of one of the two daily newspapers should strengthen both papers. "They've brought some things to the table. Volume discounts for newsprint (MediaNews owns 47 daily and 94 non-daily newspapers, not including the Tribune), they're big on technology and they're constantly trying to improve their papers. We've benefited from that."
E-MAIL: steve@desnews.com