> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Ronn Blankenship
[snip]
> (1) I'm assuming that you meant to say "� there is only ONE
> daily newspaper."
Of course.
>
> If so,
>
> (2) The truth of your statement must depend on what you define as "U.S.
> cities of any size."
It's easy to point out exceptions, but the fact is, more than 80 percent of
daily newspapers in the United States are monopolies. The number of dailies
has been shrinking rapidly for decades, with the number of owners shrinking
even more rapidly as chains take over -- the monopoly owners often have
multiple monopolies!
> Chicago is, what?, the third-largest city in the US, and its two papers,
> the Trib and the Sun-Times, are both well-known.
Chicago is a very unusual exception. I didn't say that every U.S. city has
a newspaper monopoly. It's nearly all.
> I'm not sure precisely where Denver ranks in size, but it has the _Denver
> Post_ and the _Rocky Mountain News_.
Which have a JOA that combines their advertising into one, monopoly entity.
> Atlanta has the _Atlanta Journal_ and the _Atlanta Constitution_.
Which are both owned by Cox. Two newspapers owned by the same company is
still a monopoly. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that as Cox does in
Atlanta, many of these monopolies own a lot of other local media.
> Smaller cities (under 1,000,000 in the MSA):
>
> Salt Lake City has the _SL Tribune_ and the _Deseret News_.
Their JOA goes back decades. The Desert News has sued the Tribune for
stifling competition through the JOA. The News has rights to buy the
Tribute outright in 2002.
> Birmingham, AL has the _Birmingham News_ and the _Birmingham Post-Herald_.
The Post-Herald is barely surviving. It is failing despite a JOA, as has
happened in many other cities (which is why people in Denver say they are
fighting a monopoly in their town, despite the appearance of two papers).
> (There may be other examples, but these are the ones I came up
> with off the
> top of my head: in many cases, of course, because I've lived in or near
> these cities at one time or another and read both papers regularly.)
I guess that's what happens when you come up with things off the top of your
head. I don't mean that as a personal criticism, but I'm pretty serious
about this topic and tried to present it as such, not an off-the-cuff
ramble.
> I know that there is some co-operation between the two papers in some
> cities (and there well may be in other cities whose papers I'm not as
> familiar with). For example, the two papers in Salt Lake share the same
> classified ads, and in Atlanta and Birmingham, the two papers publish a
> combined edition on weekends (M-F, one is the "morning paper" and the
> other is the "afternoon paper.")
You're probably thinking of JOAs, in which everything but editorial is
combined. For advertising purposes, which is what I was talking about, a
JOA creates a true monopoly. And even with JOAs, one paper usually takes
over, as is happening in several places now.
> Also, in most cities of any size in the US, you can get _The New York
> Times_, _The Wall Street Journal_ and _USA Today_ at least in every
> bookstore or newsstand, and frequently in every convenience store or from
> boxes on every corner downtown*, making those essentially
> national newspapers.
Two responses: I wasn't talking about anyone having a national monopoly.
Second, it's hard to argue that there are any truly national newspapers in
this country, partly because the old pearl, "All politics is local" is more
true in this nation than just about anywhere. Strong states rights call for
strong local media, I believe.
Nick
