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Article: In bed together. (Detroit Free Press and Detroit News joint operating agreement) (editorial)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- August 27, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Knight-Ridder Inc., the parent company of the Detroit Free Press, earned $155 million last year. The Gannett Company, which owns The Detroit News, netted twice that much. By any corporate measure, they are among the healthier media conglomerates in the land. Yet earlier this month, Edwin Meese 3d, in one of his final acts as Attorney General, overruled both his own antitrust department and an administrative law judge and granted The News and Free Press a joint operating agreement.
This cozy arrangement allows the only two dailies in Detroit, the nation's fifth largest market, to combine their business, circulation and advertising operations, thus creating an ...