Barons back off newspaper trial

BARONS BACK OFF NEWSPAPER TRIAL
[SOURCE: San Francisco Bay Guardian, AUTHOR: GW Schulz]
Clint Reilly's federal civil suit against the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group, filed last year in an attempt to block the would-be competitors from sharing monopoly control of the Bay Area's daily newspaper establishment, ended in a settlement which blocks any future business deals between Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, and MediaNews, which now owns almost every other daily in the San Francisco region. The settlement saved some of the nation's biggest newspaper barons from the prospect of a long and embarrassing trial that could have produced alarming revelations about the way the big publishers do business. Apparently, MediaNews had tried to purchase the SF Chronicle and Hearst, for the past ten years, has been interested in investing in the MediaNews business model, best described as a series of "clusters," in which the company consolidates the operations of several regional newspapers, hacks madly at the payroll with a broadsword, and sends ill-fated staffers packing, from veteran editors to longtime press operators. Hearst's inspiration for its major stock investment in MediaNews began after the two became fast friends in Texas. MediaNews in 1995 sold the assets of the Houston Post for $120 million to Hearst, which owned the Houston Chronicle, enabling Hearst to rid itself of a major-market competitor.
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