Roster of One-Paper Towns is Growing   

JOAs are DOA in Evansville, Chattanooga and other markets.

NEWSPAPER JOINT OPERATING agencies continue to disappear, with the one in Evansville, Indiana, folding at the end of 1998 and Chattanooga's ending early this January.
Joint operating agreements, or JOAs, functioned in 28 cities at one time or another, but the latest casualties drop the total to 13. Of those remaining, two appear to be on perilous ground and another two likely will dis-appear within eight years, when contracts expire.
Economic trends and competition--from the Internet, cable television, direct mail, and suburban weeklies and shoppers--are turning the United States into a nation of one-newspaper towns.
The hard fact behind what happened in Chattanooga and Evansville, and in earlier months with joint operating agreements in Nashville and El Paso, is that it's more profitable to publish one newspaper in a city than two. When a joint agency closes, readers lose at least one newspaper and the benefit of editorial competition between two dailies. Maintaining that competition was the point behind the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, which legalized what otherwise would be the illegal joining of production and business operations and sharing of profits.
Although losing a newspaper in a two-paper market is never a happy event, some good can come of it. If its owner has the will, the single paper emerging from a former joint agency can use its higher profits to produce broader and better coverage than either paper individually provided. This is what Walter E. Hussman Jr. says he intends in Chattanooga.
Hussman's company, WEHCO Media, acquired the Chattanooga Free Press last spring and negotiated the purchase of the Free Press' joint agency partner, the Chattanooga Times, in November. The Times is famous for being Adolph S. Ochs' first newspaper: He purchased it in 1878, 18 years before he bought the New York Times. His great-grandchildren sold the Chattanooga Times.
Combining the two publications into one morning paper, Hussman says, will eliminate duplication. ``Instead of having two reporters covering the Chattanooga City Council," he says, ``we can send one of them to the council meeting in Cleveland, Tennessee, 30 miles away.''
As of this writing, the new paper's name had not been determined. But Hussman says its predecessors will be reflected, at least in part, in two editorial pages: one generally conservative, in keeping with Free Press tradition, and the other generally liberal, as was the Times'. They'll run on facing pages.
The Chattanooga joint agency was somewhat unusual in that the dominant partner owned the afternoon paper. Importantly, though, the Free Press also owned the only Sunday paper. These days, the Sunday edition can produce 40 percent of revenue and roughly the same in profits. The Times once had a Sunday paper but gave it up in 1980 as the cost of getting the Free Press to enter a JOA. (The two papers had a previous joint agency, which lasted from 1942 to 1966.)
Indeed, having two papers in a joint agency share in the Sunday edition has been a key to longevity. Of the last 10 joint agencies that have closed, not one of the disappearing papers shared a Sunday edition.
A rule of thumb in the fate of joint agencies is that once the weaker paper's weekday circulation falls below 20 percent of the stronger paper's, the end could be near. The Albuquerque Tribune's circulation has dropped to 20 percent of the Albuquerque Journal's, and the Birmingham Post-Herald has 14 percent of the Birmingham News'. When the weaker paper's circulation gets low in relation to the larger one's, its appeal to advertisers sags, and the cost of selling, producing and distributing the weaker paper overcomes the revenue it generates.
The Evansville Press' circulation at the end was a respectable 32 percent of the Evansville Courier's, but in this instance another factor kicked in: The JOA expired at the end of 1998, and the Courier chose not to renew. Now the Courier gets 100 percent of an expanded profit level.
Expiration of the contract in 2005 will certainly end the San Francisco joint agency, if one side hasn't already sold out to the other. The Examiner has 24 percent of the Chronicle's weekday circulation and, importantly, owns 50 percent of the Sunday joint edition. The Cincinnati JOA expires in 2007, and by then the Post's circulation probably will be well below the current 34 percent of the Enquirer's; the Post has no share of Sunday.
History probably will view joint operating agencies as noble efforts to preserve editorial diversity--and, not so nobly, a share of profits for owners of failing newspapers. Such agencies may continue in some cities for a long time, but they're likely only delaying the inevitable.