Antitrust Games
We go on and on about how great it is that Seattle has two strong alternative weekly papers. Ok, maybe not "on and on", but we've said it at least a few times. Once for sure. We're saying it now: It's great that Seattle has two strong alternative weekly papers. What we have probably been a little quieter about is that fact that our city is also served by two strong daily papers and, truth be told, Seattlest might link to a story from either the Seattle Times or the Post Intelligencer's from time to time. Every day. Several times every day, actually, and rarely are their praises sung around here. Praising the PI just doesn't get you the same points that talking up The Stranger does in Seattlest's circles.
The Stranger and the Seattle Weekly seem to dance with each other from week to week. Seattle Weekly does a food issue and 24 hours later The Stranger comes out with a food issue of their own. It's weird sometimes, regardless of who you perceive to be leading the dance. It's almost like they have some kind of joint operating pact or something, although we know, of course, that they have absolutely no relationship whatsoever.
They call the actual agreement between the PI and the Seattle Times a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), the details of which are rarely, if ever, spelled out in a way that the general reading public can understand, much less anything Seattlest can make sense of. Please, if anyone can explain the JOA to Seattlest in monkey grunts or charades or something we would be ecstatic. The papers have been living with this JOA for the past 22 years, though, so a great many of you have never experienced Seattle media BJOA.
Ok, finally getting to the news here: The US Justice Department has been investigating whether the Seattle Times has been in violation of anti-trust laws with regards to the JOA for the past two years and finally came around to an answer on Friday.
From the horse's mouth:
The Division did not find sufficient basis to conclude that the Seattle Times Company engaged in improper conduct that is likely to lead to monopolization of the Seattle newspaper market.
There is a bit of reading to do on the subject at the Seattle Times and Post Intelligencer as well as at Editor and Publisher Magazine and the Committee For a Two-Newspaper Town. Report back here when you can understand what the hell is going on.
Lawyers talking compliments of the DOJ:
The Seattle Times Company is presently seeking to invoke a provision of the JOA called a "Loss Notice" clause that permits either party to terminate the JOA if there are three consecutive years of operational losses under a specified formula. Were such a termination to occur, each newspaper owner would need to decide whether and, if so, how to continue publishing its respective paper. The Washington state courts are currently considering a contractual dispute between the parties as to whether the Seattle Times Company may invoke this provision. The two newspaper owners have agreed between themselves that no action will be taken to close either of the JOA newspapers until this litigation is concluded and all appeals exhausted. If the companies were to decide to terminate one of the two newspapers under terms that were not part of the JOA as approved by the Department of Justice, the Division would need to evaluate the antitrust issues raised by such a decision.
