The Newspaper Lobby   

The newspaper industry jumped into big-time lobbying in the '90s, averaging nearly $1 million a year over the past four years to influence legislators and legislation on Capitol Hill, records show.

The Newspaper Association of America, which represents publishers of more than 1,500 newspapers in the United States and Canada, is by far the biggest lobbying power, but media organizations such as Gannett and Times Mirror also have a presence in Washington.

The lobbyists focus on a wide range of issues, including new information services, postal rates, taxes, health care and newspaper recycling. They spend less time and money, however, on issues affecting the newsroom, such as last year's closing of Department of Motor Vehicle records by Congress.

"For publishers, the main issue often is their bottom line and issues that affect it," says Washington press attorney and former editor Robert Becker. "They get really riled up about postal regulations, but they aren't often the first ones involved in a news-gathering issue."

The newspaper industry, which in the 1980s had a lobbying operation once described as "bush league," has looked like a major Washington player since the publisher's association hired USA Today Publisher Cathleen Black to run the organization in 1991 and made a conscious decision to crank up its lobbying efforts.

From 1991 to 1994, the NAA spent $2.78 million to influence federal legislation, according to lobbying reports filed with Congress. In comparison, NAA's predecessor, the American Newspaper Publishers Association, spent less than $40,000 on lobbying in 1988.

Newspaper interests spent more than $10,000 renting limos to shuttle publishers around town to schmooze their hometown members of Congress, $1,200 for a "Guys and Dolls" gala at the Kennedy Center, $15,000 for tickets to President Clinton's inaugural dinner, nearly $17,000 to host an industry reception and some loose change on assorted booze, baseball tickets, birthday flowers and chocolate treats for lawmakers and their staffs.

Newspaper lobbyists also follow their colleagues in the age-old tradition of wining and dining lobbying targets. The disclosure reports read like a roster of Washington's A-list restaurants: The Palm, La Colline, L'Auberge Chez Francois, Bice and Georgia Brown's. And not all of the lobbyists confined their power lunches and elegant dinners to Washington. W. Terry Maguire, then-senior vice president for ANPA, reported spending $509.72 for dinner with a Senate aide at chef Roger Verge's exclusive Le Moulin de Mougins restaurant near Cannes in the south of France.

The biggest expense, however, went to paying high-priced lobbyists – both in-house and outside consultants – including Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. and former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley, two of Washington's top hired guns.

The change of lobbying philosophy was triggered by what NAA's Black called "the fight of our lives" – competition from the Baby Bells over providing information services. NAA lobbying jumped from less than $200,000 in 1990 to nearly $700,000 the following 1ear to a record $1.2 million in 1992, according to disclosure reports. Despite the increased lobbying efforts, the newspaper industry failed to win restrictions on the regional Bells.

ýhile NAA is the biggest, it is by no means the only newspaper lobbying force on Capitol Hill. Capital Cities/ABC, Gannett, Times Mirror, the National Newspaper Association, which represents mostly weekly newspapers, Hearst, Scripps League and Cox all r3ported congressional lobbying activity last year.

But they too focus almost exclusively on business issues.

Then who's on Capitol Hill watching out for issues that affect journalists? "Not enough people," says David Bartlett, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association. "We do a little bit... SPJ does a little of it. ASNE does a little of it. And if you restrict [the definition of] the press to the news media, that's it."

RTNDA, the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors are all small-time operations on the Washington scale. SPJ and ASNE don't even file lobbyist disclosure reports with Congress.

The political power, says Bartlett, clearly lies with the newspaper publishers and TV station owners. "They have so much more influence, so much more impact, than we could ever hope to have," he says. "They represent ownership and management, which is far more important, at least perceived to be far more important to politicians, than working news people."