Published in The Colorado Statesman, Denver
1-2-2009

CRITICS, COMPETITORS OUTSMARTED IN DENVER NEWSPAPER WAR

After six years, the Joint Operating Agreement between The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, designed to save the latter, is grinding down, a financial failure. News owner Scripps wants out, even if it means shuttering the News.

Self-styled newspaper critics can pontificate all over the place about blame, cause and effect, but in the driver’s seat is Dean Singleton, a brilliant print-media magnate who is just too smart for them and, so far, his growing list of competitors including the once-mighty Scripps.

Noted for playing his cards close to his vest, Singleton deserves credit for his guts, energy and tenacity. He can play either side of the JOA game and currently is involved in apparently the minority role in daily newspapers in Detroit, Salt Lake City and Charleston, W.V.

His privately held company MediaNews Group has blossomed into one of America’s largest predominantly paid-circulation newspaper chains. He owns, operates or has his fingers in at least 60 dailies and 97 non-dailies. Critics can holler "monopoly," but realistically the newspaper business is so tough today that numerous of these communities might not have a local newspaper of record if it were not for Singleton. They all can’t be winners.

In Colorado besides the Post, his company owns or operates at least five dailies and six non-dailies -- still behind Swift Communication’s six dailies and seven non-dailies, although Reno-based Swift just closed down its weekly Valley Journal at Carbondale.

Just how far Singleton can extend his newspaper empire before it too collapses along with other newspaper chains under the weight of the numbing decline in the industry itself and now the economy, remains to be seen. Together these crippling factors also make it almost impossible for start-ups to succeed, even in non-competitive markets.

It’s no secret that Singleton chairs the Denver Newspaper Agency, which controls both Denver dailies and his other Colorado affiliates. The newspaper business is not your ordinary creature, yet it has one thing in common with most other commercial enterprises in that who ever allocates the money usually also gets to call the shots.

Still, the lack of full, transparent financial disclosure by both principals in this Denver fight to the finish is bothersome. Reports kept saying all along that the Post was making money while the News was losing its shirt. How could that be?

Scripps’ other Colorado newspapers, the Boulder Daily Camera, Colorado Daily and Broomfield Enterprise, are also in the DNA mix and the Camera announced Dec. 18 that it is doing nicely financially.

Critics can quibble over page-size affecting advertising revenue (News=tabloid vs. Post=journal) but that should make no difference if under the JOA the combined total was supposed to be split. Both, as do most dailies, overcharge for classifieds and capitalize on obituaries -- not good ways to enhance the image of a caring press serving the public.

Retail businesses started moving away from run-of-press advertising years ago when newspapers, dailies especially, decided to deliver preprinted inserts, not a few but by the ton, at discounted prices. In the Denver market where circulation has held on pretty well considering, there may not be enough ROP left for two major dailies to wrap their news and commentary around. In contrast, the WSJ and USA Today seem to thrive without inserts.

Couple that complication with the unforgiving Internet, and it’s doubly unlikely that any sane publisher would want to face-off with Singleton in Denver, whether in or out of a JOA. Under the current JOA with the News he has veto power over any successor thereto. All parties involved including the Justice Department signed off on that stipulation, so that’s that.

For some of us with printer’s ink and metal in our veins (mine comes from 50 years of editing and publishing Colorado small-town newspapers) the answer to whether Denver can continue to have competing major daily newspapers lies within its retail business establishments and their advertising agencies. It’s their decision and so far they’ve said no.

Newspapers get results but cannot publish on desire alone. Wake up, Denver!

(Conarroe served as president of the Colorado Press Association in 1981 and is an honorary lifetime member. Before retiring in 1998, he and his family last published the Louisville Times, Lafayette News, Erie Review and Superior Observer.)
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