TWO-NEWSPAPER TOWNS
Communities are better served in a 2-newspaper town, experts agree
CHOICE IS GOOD.
Honolulu is fortunate to have more than one daily newspaper, according to everyone interviewed for this fifth-anniversary report.
Honolulu is one of only 41 U.S. cities that have competing dailies, and at least a dozen of those cities have joint operating agreements -- like Honolulu used to have -- in which the dailies' editorial functions are separate but they share advertising, printing, circulation and other operations.
"The situation you have here is close to unique," said Ben Bagdikian, a California-based author, former journalist and retired journalism school dean at the University of California at Berkeley.
"Most JOAs, as a matter of fact, have consolidated -- and afternoon dailies have almost, among metros, almost completely disappeared."
Newspaper industry analyst John Morton believes that while JOA communities are well served by the editorial competition, competition between papers on all fronts is a superior scenario.
That competition can take different forms, such as in San Francisco, where the Chronicle and the Examiner do battle.
"The Examiner is still there, thanks to the very deep pockets of (Denver billionaire) Philip Anschutz," Morton said. The Examiner is a free newspaper, as are its sister papers in Washington, D.C., Virginia and, soon, Baltimore.
Some two-paper towns have only one newspaper company that publishes morning and afternoon titles, but they, too, are increasingly rare.
Honolulu businessman Stuart Ho has a unique view of Honolulu's newspaper war. His father, the late Chinn Ho, was among several investors that owned the Star-Bulletin for a few years in the 1960s, before selling the paper to Gannett Co.
"My father always wanted a two-newspaper town, which is one of the reasons he became interested in the Star-Bulletin," said Ho, now president and chief executive officer of the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific.
Ho was also a member of the Gannett board of directors and knows of its operational style, as well as the slings and arrows hurled at it by competitors. "Gannett has always been unfairly treated, I think."
"The rap on Gannett was that it was business, to the exclusion of journalism, but that is rarely true," Ho said. The company has added resources to many of its acquisitions, and "from a purely investment point of view, there are newspaper chains in the United States where if you acquired them, there would be nothing left to squeeze out -- and Gannett is not one of those kinds of chains."
2 IS BETTER THAN 1
U.S. cities with more than one daily newspaper (published at least five times a week):
Tucson, Ariz. (3) †
Los Angeles (4)
Pleasanton, Calif. (2)
San Diego (2)
San Francisco (2)
San Mateo, Calif. (2)
Aspen, Colo. (2)
Boulder, Colo. (2)
Denver (2) †
Washington, D.C. (2)
Miami (3) *
Honolulu (2)
Chicago (5) *
Fort Wayne, Ind. (2) †
Hagerstown, Md. (2) *
Boston (2)
Detroit (2) †
Columbia, Mo. (2)
Jefferson City, Mo. (2) *
Las Vegas (2) †
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Trenton, N.J. (2)
Albuquerque, N.M. (2) †
New York (7)
Ogdensburg, N.Y. (2) *
Cincinnati (2) †
Portland, Ore. (2)
Franklin-Oil City, Pa. (2) *
Lancaster, Pa. (2) *
Philadelphia (2) *
Scranton, Pa. (2) *
Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (2)
York, Pa. (2) †
Kingsport, Tenn. (2)
Salt Lake City (2) †
Seattle (2) †
Charleston, W.Va. (2) †
Parkersburg, W.Va. *
Wheeling, W. Va. *
Madison, Wis. *
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† Newspapers publishing under joint operating agreements
* U.S. cities with newspapers that have common ownership
Sources: Editor & Publisher International Year Book 2005, Newspaper Association of America