LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Las Vegas Review-Journal announced Friday it will no longer print rival The Las Vegas Sun for the first time in decades amid a legal dispute over the country’s last joint operating agreement, which stems from a 1970 law designed to protect newspapers.
The Review-Journal said in an editorial that readers “won’t find print Las Vegas Sun inserts inside,” noting that the Sun has a website, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media platforms and the freedom to make its own paper.
“We encourage them to do so. The Review-Journal competes with countless news and entertainment sources, but we welcome one more. We just don’t want to foot the bill. It’s time for The Sun to stand on its own feet,” the editorial said, without specifying the cost.
Attorney Leif Reed said in an email that the two publications will appear in court on Friday and The Sun hopes a judge will order an immediate resumption of printing. He said it would be the first day in 76 years that The Sun was not printed.
“This causes irreparable harm to our community because no one benefits when local newspapers are banned from publication,” he said.
The now-rare joint operating agreement calls for The Sun to produce a daily insert in the Review-Journal while the two companies remain editorially independent, with separate newsrooms and websites.
Lower courts ruled the agreement was unenforceable because the U.S. attorney general never signed off on the 2005 update, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by The Sun in February.
An editorial in the Review-Journal called the Supreme Court decision a decisive victory and said the Sun’s suspension of publication on Friday was “the culmination of 6 1/2 years of litigation between newspapers triggered by The Sun.”
News business analyst Ken Doctor said the decline in such agreements between rival publications was part of “the long, slow farewell to newspapers as we know them.” The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News ended their 40-year agreement last year. USA Today, which owns the Detroit Free Press, recently announced plans to acquire The Detroit News.
These two papers are long-term competitors
The Sun was founded in 1950 in response to the Review-Journal’s refusal to negotiate with the typesetters of the International Printing Union. The union started its own newspaper and sought financial support from businessman Hank Greenspan. The Greenspan family still owns the newspaper.
The Review-Journal has been published since 1909, originally as the Clark County Review. It is owned by the Adelson family, casino magnates and Republican mega-donors, and remains the state’s largest newspaper.
The Review-Journal’s editorial leans conservative, while the Sun’s editorial leans liberal. In 1970, then-President Richard Nixon signed the Newspaper Protection Act, which was intended to save newspapers costs while maintaining competition and editorial diversity in the city as newspapers began to struggle financially.
The two newspapers first entered into a joint operating agreement in 1989 when The Sun was in financial trouble. The agreement makes The Sun an afternoon paper on weekdays and a Review-Journal section on weekend mornings, with the Review-Journal handling production, distribution and advertising. The Review-Journal also collects all revenue and is required to pay a monthly fee to The Sun to cover The Sun’s news and editorial costs.
In 2005, the agreement was modified to insert The Sun into the daily morning review magazine.
Review-Journal owners sought to terminate the agreement in 2019, and Sun owners sued, alleging that the termination violated antitrust laws.
Readers have more choices today
The 1970 law allowing such agreements was signed at a time when news choice was less common and concerns about news monopolies were greater.
Stephen Bates, a professor of journalism and media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said Las Vegas and Nevada as a whole now has stronger, more independent news organizations than elsewhere.
The Sun also publishes online. But the company argued in court that losing its print products could make it more difficult to recruit staff, lead to a loss of readers, or even force it to close.
Genel Belmas, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas who specializes in media law, said it would be disappointing if the country’s last joint operating agreement ended. During a visit to Vegas, she enjoyed being able to pick up a review magazine and see the sun folded inside, offering two different views in one place. Online news media make it easier for consumers to stay in their own echo chambers, she said.
“Every local news outlet we lose — big cities, small towns, whatever — is a loss of perspective and a loss of potentially alternative viewpoints,” Belmas said.
