One small step for The Seattle Times, one big kick in the craw for metropolitan Seattle.
Regardless of the legal validity of the state Supreme Court's June 30 ruling stating, yes, the Times can include financial losses from 2000 and 2001 in exercising an escape clause in the Times/Post-Intelligencer Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), the real story is that Seattle has just inched closer to becoming a one-daily-newspaper city.
The so-called "loss clause," under the terms of the JOA, states that after three consecutive years of financial losses, either paper can force negotiations that could lead to closing down one of the papers or simply dissolving the agreement. On April 29, 2003, the Times notified the P-I's owners, the Hearst Corporation, that the paper suffered financial losses under the JOA in 2000, 2001 and 2002 - this, just one day after Hearst filed suit in King County Superior Court to block the Times from taking actions that could shut one of the papers down or blow up the JOA.
In countering the loss-clause claim, Hearst invoked "force majeure," arguing that the 2000 and 2001 losses obviously were caused by a newspaper strike. The question then became whether such a strike constituted an "extraordinary event." Both the state Court of Appeals, in March 2004, and the Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, said no way.
And so here we stand, not exactly on the precipice of a post-Post-Intelligencer universe, but certainly a few paces closer to the edge. The Hearst Corp. has deep pockets and has vowed to carry on with a costly legal battle, while Times publisher Frank Blethen has accused the New York-based publisher of "bleeding" the Times with endless and substantial court costs.
And around we go, a tale of one city, two papers and the people who run them. Not exactly the suspenseful stuff of "Law & Order," but certainly no tempest in a teacup. The cultural and political ramifications of Seattle becoming a one-paper town are immense, and for reasons little understood in today's cathode-and-mouseclick-driven culture.
It should be pointed out that were Seattle's print media to be reduced by one daily, the benefits to the Capitol Hill Times and its brethren at Pacific Publishing Inc. would be, let us say, agreeable. There would be slack - in community coverage, in neighborhood focus, in variety and color of voices and opinion - and we could pick some of that up. Perhaps circulation would go up, advertising base and revenue. But what's good for the goose ... well, you know.
In both the abstract and the most concrete sense, newspapers are the couriers of civic dialogue; at their best, they at once create and reflect and reiterate the debate that drives the life of the city they are meant to represent. Newspapers also stand as an important check on the powers of government, whether they are communicating facts, voicing opinions or serving as a conduit for the concerns of their readership.
The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are significantly different publications. All you have to do is look at which stories each chooses to run above the front-page fold on any given day to see that their priorities are at odds. In the most general sense, the P-I is our liberal newspaper, the Times our conservative one. No small potatoes, with a war going on, a controversial president in office, a monorail on the fiscal ropes, a crumbling viaduct and traffic that rivals the worst in the nation. These are political issues that deserve complex, multi-vocal political decisions.
One daily does not negate the other; rather they complement and augment each other - by challenging choices in coverage, compelling debate, competing for readership. Analogous to the multi-party political system, there is little to be gained by subtracting one of these voices. But there is much to lose.
The free-market argument that democracy is tantamount to consumer choice is more often than not a facetious one - "Pepsi or Coke" does not equal democratic freedom - but here, in the trenches of ink and information, diversity is crucial.
Simply put, the more papers, the better.
Seattle - already straining the seams of its parochial britches, suffering the growing pains of metropolitan adulthood - would be ill served by a single daily newspaper, no matter how good it was. That day should never come.
Never, but especially not now.
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