Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Newspapers in Charleston, W. Va., seek dismissal of federal anti-trust lawsuit

The owners of The Charleston Gazette and the Charleston Daily Mail want a federal judge to dismiss a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit alleging that the Gazette bought the Daily Mail's half of the papers' joint operating agreement (JOA) in 2004 to put the Mail out of business.

The response denied that, noting the deal required the Mail’s previous owner, MediaNews Group, to control editorial policies of the paper. “The Gazette Co. and MediaNews had no such plan to close the Mail, nor do they have any such plan now,” the reply said. A staff story in the Gazette said the suit “cited cutbacks in Daily Mail operations — but Monday’s response said these have been only normal cost-saving steps, common to any newspaper facing competition from the Internet and other news media.”

The newspapers’ reply said the Justice Department was mistakenly assuming that papers in a JOA, which the department must approve, are in economic competition with each other. “In reality, it said, JOAs eliminate financial competition, letting papers pool costs and split profits,” the story said. “The only competition that remains is ‘the competition of “thoughts and ideas” that is beyond the scope of the antitrust laws,’ Monday’s filing said. ‘And, as any casual reader can attest, the two [Charleston] newspapers are fiercely independent.’” The Gazette's editorial stance is generally liberal, the Mail's generally conservative.

The response asked for “swift dismissal of the Justice Department case to avoid the extreme legal cost of the antitrust discovery process,” the non-bylined story said. (Read more) For a later story, carrying the byline of Daily Mail Business Editor George Hohmann, with a link to a PDF of the motion, click here.

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