September 22, 2000

Will Post owner get handed monopoly without showing his JOA cards at all?

The Denver Rocky Mountain News’ deep discounting and penny-a-day deals, according to Justice Department investigators, only brought the Rocky closer to financial disaster, with the paper showing an operating loss of $19.73 million in the first half of this year.

It’s dismal numbers like these that has the proposed Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) between the Rocky and The Denver Post zooming through Justice checkpoints while just barely slowing down for investigators to look under the seats. This month antitrust regulators gave their go-ahead to the deal, and all that now appears to stand in the way of Janet Reno’s approval is 30 days of public comment. The Post and Rocky might even get the JOA in place by the start of 2001.

Count me among the curious Colorado journalists, however, that believe Post owner Dean Singleton is getting handed the keys to a lucrative monopoly without even a cursory government glance at Media General’s Denver financial picture. While Singleton was more than happy to put E.W. Scripps’ ailing Rocky up on the rack as the sacrificial lamb, is it fair for the public — and yes, much smaller news competitors — to not be able to look closer into the apparent winner in a historic and long-running newspaper war. What is it, some of us wonder, that Media General wants to hide?

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Anyone who thinks Scripps and Media General won’t exercise their JOA monopoly money to put more hotels on the Front Range media game board should think again.

My Rocky subscription bill just came with a 12-month “best offer” price of $64. Not exactly the $4.95 some paid for a full year, but still better than the Post’s current 52-week rate of $119.60. Analysts predict subscription rates might remain steady, but there is no doubt advertisers will be in for some startling 2001 rate increases under a JOA.

In a poker game for such huge stakes, it seems ludicrous that Singleton simply gets to fold his hand and pull in the pot, even though he has to split it 50/50 with Scripps President William Burleigh.

Challenges by Jeffco Publishing Co., which operates competing community newspapers in Jefferson County, and Westword, the alternative weekly that is printed by the News, were generally glossed over by Justice, which stated simply that a JOA still does not give the media companies the freedom to violate antitrust laws. Big deal.

The fact remains the JOA makes Denver a one-newspaper company town. Two editorial voices will remain, but all cash goes to one fat Denver Newspaper Agency account.

One surprise in the JOA investigation was questions surrounding Scripp’s ownership of the Boulder Daily Camera. Even though a “Mile High Buy” advertising deal into both papers apparently has not gone well, regulators seemed concerned that a profitable operation like the Camera should not be able to benefit further from a JOA. While the Post and News devoted pages to the Justice report, including articles on the News-Camera partnership, the Camera remained unusually quiet.

It appears the Camera may have to break off any revenue partnerships with the Rocky if the JOA is OK’d, but definitive answers to that question have not come forward.

While on the topic of advertising, I had to ponder the future “convergence” of print and the Internet with the new gadget delivered to me that allows me to scan bar codes on advertising in “Wired” magazine and immediately be zipped to the advertiser’s Web site.

Do I really want to know so much more about an advertiser that I will take the time to load the free software and add yet another memory-sucking device to my PC? Doubt it. The :CueCAT optical scanner (yes, it is shaped like a kitty cat) remains in its box. How tough can it be to simply go to my computer, and type in an advertiser’s URL?

Wired teamed up with Delta to offer a contest and airline ticket prizes if readers install this junk — giving them contest entries once they connect to sites with the new scanner. I still like reading “Wired,” but I’m not ready yet to plug in its ads. Anyone feeling sorely deprived because they did not get one of these things can get information about the contest at www.fatcatwebhunt.com. As with all contests, you still can simply enter by sending in old-fashioned handwritten entries on a 3-by-5 card.

The Denver Rocky Mountain News’ deep discounting and penny-a-day deals, according to Justice Department investigators, only brought the Rocky closer to financial disaster, with the paper showing an operating loss of $19.73 million in the first half of this year.

It’s dismal numbers like these that has the proposed Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) between the Rocky and The Denver Post zooming through Justice checkpoints while just barely slowing down for investigators to look under the seats. This month antitrust regulators gave their go-ahead to the deal, and all that now appears to stand in the way of Janet Reno’s approval is…

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