Joint Moves

By: When Tulsa World Executive Editor Joe Worley and Ed Kelley, editor of The Oklahoman, met for lunch in late October 2008 in Stillwater, there were, by choice, no other editors, reporters, or ? thank goodness ? publishers around. The newspaper rivals chatted over salads at the appropriately named Hideaway Pizza, a spot equidistant from both newsrooms. As the two veterans talked shop, they breached a subject typically taboo among strong competitors: sharing content. "It doesn't roll off your tongue too easily, but the more you do it, the easier it gets," says Worley, recalling that first meeting. "They were going through some early retirements and terminations, and the first thing [Kelley] said was he did not want to go through anything like that again."

A few weeks later in November, Worley was hit with his own cuts: 25 people gone from his newsroom, a 16% decrease. That brought the "sharing" issue up again ? but still no action was taken. Finally, at a meeting on Jan. 8 in Oklahoma City, staffers from both papers joined the conversation. By then the Oklahoman had lost 30 people in the past year, reducing its news staff to 190.

After two more meetings, the deal was done, set to go into effect in late January. "Our business editor, city editor, sports editor all share our budgets with them, and vice versa with us," Worley says of the current daily routine. "We are editing the budgets and keeping out anything we don't want to share, like enterprise stories."

But the situation in Oklahoma is hardly a special case. Numerous rival papers, some that have battled for scoops for generations, have forged such deals in the past year. From Florida to California, shared-content arrangements are emerging among dailies with no common ownership or JOA ties, as a way to reduce staff cuts and save money.

"We think it benefits both of us," says Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Washington Post, who in late 2008 struck a deal with northern competitor The Baltimore Sun to share certain stories. "We weighed the competitive issues and concluded that it is not damaging, and actually enhances." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editor David Shribman and William Marimow, editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, are the most recent team. Their papers began swapping stories, with each paper e-mailing the other its daily budget, in late January. "The only person in the United States who reads both papers is me," says Shribman. "The two papers don't really compete."

The idea is even taking on a regional tone across state lines, with five papers across New York and New Jersey launching a program, while others in the midwest are doing the same.

"We were looking for a way to enhance our coverage," says Ed Fay, director of editorial administration for New York's Daily News, which is a member of the newly minted Northeast Consortium. The group also includes The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, the Times Union of Albany, N.Y., and longtime New Jersey rivals The Star-Ledger in Newark and The Record of Hackensack. That partnership was tested during a plane crash outside Buffalo in February, when several outlets used photos and content from the Buffalo News.

But is there a decline, both in the competitive drive that sparks good work, and in the reporting, by fewer people working a certain beat or issue? Some journalism observers believe so. "The real loss is in the number of different eyes watching the same thing," says Keith Woods, dean of faculty at The Poynter Institute. "The overall loss is to the public."

At a time when newsrooms are reeling from some of the most crippling ad-revenue losses and job cuts ever ? which by one estimate has erased more than 20,000 industry jobs in 2008 ? the era of shared content and story trading is definitely here ? and likely to stay.

Signs of the Oklahoman-Tulsa World deal began appearing as soon as late January in both print and online, with bylines from each paper appearing atop reports in the other. In most cases, the stories pertain to events in one paper's circulation area to which the other paper cannot send a reporter, but would find interesting. Worley cites the sentencing of a state auditor on corruption charges in Muskogee, which the Oklahoman covered and the World ended up running on a section front.

The Oklahoman carried World stories on issues ranging from a convicted judge appealing his pension to a college fee hike being denied. "Tulsa is a big city with a lot going on, a lot of litigation because it has a federal court house," notes Kelley, who stresses that not everything is shared: "It is still on a case-by-case basis. We don't want to rush into this, and we want the journalists involved to feel as comfortable with it as we can."

Kelley says that on big breaking stories, some Washington, D.C., issues and college football ? something of near-religious significance to many Okies ? the papers remain competitive and committed to using their own staffers: "We will still deploy our resources for those stories, and be able to do it more so."

But not everyone in the state is happy about the arrangement. Along with some readers who Worley says sent numerous "e-mails of concern," local journalism observers cringed at the thought of shared content. "It is certainly not a good thing," says Joey Senat, a former World reporter and journalism professor at Oklahoma State University. "It does raise concerns about the level of reporting going on in this state." Citing the reductions in both paper's statehouse staffs, Senat adds: "Instead of having six sets of eyes on state government, we have three."

He notes that when more reporters are on an issue, some can go off in other directions: "We need to have reporters stray from the pack and look for different things to cover."

Two for Texas
As in Oklahoma, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News ? longtime fierce competitors ? are limiting their news trading to certain subjects. The two North Texas dailies are trading some sports coverage along with arts and entertainment. But hard news and breaking news remain each newsroom's purview.

Not to mention the Dallas Cowboys.

"We talked about this for years, but it never really materialized until the economic situation brought it up," says Morning News Editor Robert Mong. "It is helpful to our bottom line." While the papers had shared some distribution in the past, they never traded content.

The two papers, owned by A.H. Belo and McClatchy, began sharing Cowboys photos in November, but no articles or coverage. In January the two announced their plans to share sports coverage for the first time, and that each paper would drop some local professional sports beats.

Under the new agreement, the Morning News covers the NHL Dallas Stars and NBA Dallas Mavericks, and provides its coverage to the Star-Telegram. In exchange, the S-T will be the beat-writing source on Texas Rangers baseball, giving its stories to the Morning News. "If you'd asked me a year ago at this time if we would have been doing this, I would have said 'No way!'" admits Star-Telegram Executive Editor Jim Witt. "Now I am happy to have it." While each paper maintains its own Cowboys reporters, there are plans in the works for the papers to share more game photos next year, perhaps splitting up the eight regular season road games.

Which is not to say that all the coverage appearing in each paper is clearly labeled as coming from its rival. A Feb. 3 story by Star-Telegram writer Jeff Wilson about Rangers reliever Eddie Guardado returning to the team was posted on the Morning News Web site with Wilson's byline, but a description of him only as "special contributor" to the Morning News and no mention of his link to the Fort Worth paper.

In addition, the papers are sharing local arts and entertainment stories as well as music and theater reviews. Witt says those are considered "non-competitive" areas of coverage, and often are only covered by one paper or the other if they are in their home area: "We cover things in Fort Worth that they would not send anyone to."

Mong admits there may be some lessening in competitive edge, but adds that hard news and breaking news remains each paper's responsibility: "What the effect is, I don't know. A lot of papers have to make very difficult choices and I am willing to make this one. We will be very watchful of it."

Sharing the sunshine
Another group of fierce competitors making nice are the three major dailies in southeast Florida: The Palm Beach Post, the South Florida Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale and The Miami Herald. Some veterans at those papers find their new arrangement to share breaking and hard news stories a bit unusual, given the long-running competition. Editors stress that columnists, investigative and enterprise stories remain off-limits. Palm Beach Editor John Bartosek describes the parameters of the shared breaking-news content as "things that happened in the past 24 hours and things that advance for the next 24 hours. It is all done online."

The effort began in September after the three editors ? Bartosek, Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, and Editor Earl Maucker of the Sun Sentinel ? got together for lunch in Fort Lauderdale. "We just sat down and talked about what we could do to allow us to continue to compete, but also help each other," Gyllenhaal recalls. "We spent the whole lunch knocking ideas around and decided to do something simple and straightforward, trading routine news in 24 hours."

Maucker did not respond to E&P's requests for comment for this story.

Those three papers also share with the Scripps Treasure Coast dailies The Stuart News, The Press Journal of Vero Beach and The Tribune of Fort Pierce. In a related move, the Herald, the Sun Sentinel and the Post created the South Florida News Service, which utilizes journalism students at nearby Florida International University to write stories that can appear in all three papers.

Trading among the Florida dailies is not entirely new. Palm Beach and Miami had shared stories on occasion in the past, and the Herald recently combined its Tallahassee statehouse bureau with that of the St. Petersburg Times. Yet for some, watching these three papers in the same market openly working together is a tough pill to swallow.

"I was shocked because they were such bitter competitors. We saw the Sun Sentinel as a bitter enemy," says Doug Clifton, former editor of the Herald who oversaw its newsroom from 1991 to 1999. "I spent my whole career at the Herald scheming against the Sun Sentinel, and the Post to a lesser extent. It is hard for me to get my mind around it."

Yet it is happening. A recent troll through the three papers' Web sites found examples of sharing ranging from a Palm Beach Post story about gas-price gouging running in the Herald, to a Sun Sentinel story posted on the Post's Web site about local mayors eyeing government stimulus funds. "We recognize that our real competition is coming from every hand-held device, every Web site," Gyllenhaal contends. "We can figure out ways of supplying one another so we can be around for years to come."

Beltway buoys
Of course, every sharing deal is different. Take the Washington Post-Baltimore Sun arrangement, forged last fall. Executive editor Brauchli notes the Sun already subscribes to the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post news service, so it has access to national and international news. In addition, the Sun can use other Post stories that are not on the LAT-WP wire, while the Post can take coverage of local and regional news from Baltimore and two Maryland counties that sit between the two major cities.

"It is just an exchange," Brauchli says. "It is a pretty congenial situation, basically between metro and sports." He cites his use of Baltimore Orioles and Baltimore Ravens stories, while the Sun can take his paper's coverage of D.C.'s four professional major league teams.

Brauchli has also been in talks with other news outlets about providing content, chief among them Tribune, the Sun's parent company, but declines to elaborate. "I am not inclined to talk in specific detail," he says when asked about those discussions. "We are always interested in knowing what might be possible."

There are even some sharing agreements that extend statewide, most of which include papers that often are not direct competitors but want to save money on regional and statehouse coverage. The Ohio News Organization (ONO) was launched about a year ago initially in response to concerns over Associated Press coverage and the news service's proposed rate hike. But several of the editors at the eight participating newspapers say the arrangement has taken on a new life as a cheap, comprehensive way to share news and cut costs. "It is not really about AP anymore, it is about sharing content and colluding on major projects," says Susan Goldberg, editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland. "We have exchanged about 20,000 stories."

The central nervous system of the ONO operation is an internal Web site on which each paper posts stories it is running or will run, and others are invited to take them and use them as needed. In addition to the Plain Dealer, member papers include the Akron Beacon-Journal, The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer, the Dayton Daily News, The Repository in Canton, The Vindicator in Youngstown and The Blade of Toledo.

"The rule is, you can't use the budget as a tip sheet to then chase your own story," says Goldberg. "But we have not had a problem with that kind of thing."

Immediate benefits have emerged, she claims, noting she can get statehouse news from the Dispatch while that paper, and others, take Cleveland sports reports from her staffers.

Goldberg recalls that ONO papers also collaborated on three presidential polls last fall, which cost a combined $40,000. The joint effort allowed each paper to pay less and tailor the poll to what Ohio voters thought about issues close to their needs. "It was a better and a more comprehensive poll than any of us could have done independently," she says.

Before it was 'trendy'
In Maine, five daily papers started sharing content in 2008 in a format that has each paper informing the others about what is available to share and electronically retrievable. "I brought it up as an idea about 10 years ago," says Bangor Daily News Editor Mark Woodward. "We started sharing intermittently with Lewiston [the Sun-Journal]. But it took a number of years until, suddenly, there was interest as the financial situation changed."

Like Ohio, most of the member papers in Maine are not close competitors. In addition to Lewiston and Bangor, the three Blethen dailies ? the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and The Morning Sentinel of Waterville ? are involved. "It lets us spend more time on local news. If there is an event happening elsewhere in the state, we can let them handle it."

But the pioneers in statewide content sharing might be five newspapers in New Hampshire that have traded stories since at least the mid-'90s, according to Executive Editor David Solomon of The Telegraph in Nashua. He recalls, "It was probably more cumbersome in the [pre-e-mail] '90s because we had to fax budgets and have them retyped at the other end."

Other New Hampshire papers in the arrangement, under separate owners, are the Concord Monitor, the Valley News of Lebanon, The Keene Sentinel and the Portsmouth Herald. Not a member of that group is the New Hampshire Union Leader of Manchester, which circulates statewide.

Concord Monitor Editor Felice Belman says the other papers did not approach the Union Leader because it is a competitor as a statewide publication. "You don't want to share with someone who is in the next [news] rack," she declares. "If you are sharing with a paper that is an hour away that we don't compete with, why not?"

Belman said the exchanges aren't always a way to avoid covering something. Sometimes, she says, they can provide a related story that boosts her paper's reporting.

Gaining traction elsewhere
But sharing with those nearby or in the same state is just the beginning. At least two efforts are under way to expand the content-trading model across state lines. The Northeast Consortium has five papers in New York and New Jersey trading news and photos. Martin Dunn, editor in chief of the Daily News in New York, says of the program, "It is self-evident that newspapers have got to look at ways of combining their resources." In the midwest, Plain Dealer editor Goldberg met with several other editors from Milwaukee and Pittsburgh in January to discuss expanding the Ohio group to other cities.

"We came up with a lot of good ideas," says Editor David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who hosted that meeting. "I see it as a real possibility." He says his paper has already done some sharing with Cleveland, citing an Oct. 26 story about Pittsburgh's PNC Bank taking over Cleveland's National City Corp. The article was a joint venture of both papers, carried a double byline of staffers from each newsroom, and ran in both newspapers.

Indianapolis Star Editor Dennis Ryerson, who is also in on the potential midwest trading plan, says such interstate sharing would work well for broader-issue stories: "If you look, for example, at the auto industry all over the midwest, what happens in Detroit affects all of us. There are also storm stories, health care and other issues we all cover."

Is it worth it?
But is the money-saving element worth losses in some newsrooms' competitive spirit, and reduction in the number of reporters on some beats? Observers from academia and journalism ranks raise caution about the proliferation of such agreements.

"Competition is an absolute necessity," says Neil Henry, interim dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. "I recognize the economic necessity. It is newspapers trying to do the best that they can. But it is doing more with less ? and less. You can't keep going down this road."

Doug Clifton, who edited the Plain Dealer in addition to the Miami Herald, agrees. "It reduces the distinctiveness of each publication, even if it is things that are readily available to AP anyway," he says. "So many of these things have higher symbolic value than they have actual value."

Adds Woods of Poynter: "We can be sure in the grand scheme of things that the ability of journalists to be watchdogs is reduced."

Dave Aeikens, president of the Society of Professional Journalists and a reporter at the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, also laments the change but says the reality of financial climates must not be ignored. "You are going to see more of this as things get more difficult," he says. "You have to worry more that you can get that story than any competitive edge. If it is useful to news consumers, sharing is better than not having it at all."

There is also a feeling among some editors that the internal battle for scoops and independent reporting of a story is not as important to readers. Says Belman in Concord, "I don't know if readers pay as much attention to bylines as we do."

According to Dave Zeeck, past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and current publisher of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., the whole newspaper competition has changed with the increase in other online and mobile media news outlets. "Most papers are coming to the conclusion that the real competitors are other news providers ? and time," says Zeeck, who often shares with the nearby Seattle Times. "Why not share coverage so everyone doesn't have to be everywhere?"

One who would disagree with that line of thinking is Bernie Lunzer, president of The Newspaper Guild. He says his union is carefully watching the proliferation of sharing. "The goal is to have fewer staffers and save the employer money," he notes. "We are trying not to have a knee-jerk reaction. But it means less employment."

Never say never
The content-sharing approach has not spread to all competitive markets just yet, especially some of the fiercest rivals in Chicago, Los Angeles and even Tampa/St. Pete. Janet Coats, editor of The Tampa Tribune, says of any possible sharing with the cross-bay St. Petersburg Times, "It would be very difficult given that the newspapers have been so competitive and so fierce. It is a great newspaper war."

Coats points to the Times' push into Tampa in the past decade, including what she describes as its aggressive purchasing of the naming rights for Tampa's hockey venue, now named the St. Pete Times Forum. Still, she adds, "in the environment we are in, if anyone says 'we will not do X,' they are probably not able to stick to that."

Carolina Garcia, editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, also offers little hope that she would get into a content-trading deal with the Los Angeles Times, even though her paper last year began trading baseball coverage with the further-south Orange County Register. The Daily News trades its Los Angeles Dodgers stories with the Register in exchange for its coverage of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

"It is conceivable, but I haven't approached them," Garcia says of a potential L.A. Times-Daily News deal. "But maybe it is time we do it." Times Editor Russ Stanton did not respond to requests for comment.

Some newspaper wars, however, may be beyond any sharing truce. Take, for example, the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. Asked if he would ever share with the rival Tribune, Sun-Times Editor Michael Cooke declares, "I would sooner wear a white-paper gown and set fire to it."