Twin Cities Lawsuit One Sign Fraternal News Bonds Breaking
Important Details: The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul have long enjoyed one of the few remaining newspaper wars in American mid-sized cities. The war’s been a journalistic one, but things have taken a nasty turn, especially with the recent filing of a lawsuit. In that civil suit, MediaNews, now the fourth largest U.S. news publisher, alleges fraud, theft and conspiracy.
In brief, MediaNews, owner of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, charges that its former publisher, Par Ridder, took and shared unauthorized competitive information when he jumped from the Pioneer Press to the Star Tribune in early March. The suit also charges that Ridder (who is the son of former Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder) and two other former Pioneer Press executives violated non-compete contracts, when they jumped to the bigger Star-Tribune. Just last week, a judge allowed the Pioneer Press access to the computers of about a dozen Star Tribune executives, to ascertain how much confidential data may have been shared.
MediaNews’ suit also names Avista Capital Holdings, the company that just entered the daily newspaper business when it bought the Star Tribune from McClatchy in December. The suit is a major breach — news publishers seldom sue each other.
But the suit is just one of several signs that the the business woes of the industry is pushing apart fraternal bonds that have long held.
Consider these recent moves:
- Twelve newspapers join long-time newspaper rival Yahoo!, in partnership around recruitment classifieds, search, local news and ad sales;
- The recruitment business itself divides publishers largely among the top 3 competitive sites. While Yahoo! has taken a broad middle part of the news industry into its HotJobs! jobs vertical, Monster Worldwide has picked up more than 50 daily publishers as affiliates. Meanwhile CareerBuilder, owned by Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy, has increasingly moved sales personnel into the markets of newspaper publishers not part of its network.
In addition, many newspaper companies are going their own ways in choice of advertising networks and user-generated content platforms overall, and these will inevitably cause conflicts in the years ahead.
Implications: The Twin Cities suit and the many new partnerships are another indication that the world of newspaper publishing is changing rapidly. It’s every publisher for himself, as margins tighten and news companies must reach way beyond their own traditional reach.
For the industry, it’s unfortunate that publishers were unable to come together over the last 10 years. They tried to create their own portal (New Century News), ad networks (Real Cities) and former Big 3 products, in the now-fading days of Tribune/Gannett/Knight Ridder partnerships. As they wade into the wider world, inevitably giving away parts of their business and their revenue to gain audience and advertisers, their leverage is reduced. But the fraternity, long in place, is now eroding quickly.
While the Yahoo! agreements push together 12 publishers, we’re bound to see traditional news publishers — many with growing cable, broadcast and Internet investments in addition to newspaper — go their own ways.