Speaker Pelosi Urges 'Leeway' in Bay Area Newspaper Dealings

By: Joe Strupp On a day when Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer publishes its last print edition, the company?s San Francisco Chronicle is getting some congressional help that may save it from the same fate, or worse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, urged the Justice Department Monday to consider giving Bay Area papers "more leeway to merge or consolidate business operations to stay afloat," the Chronicle reported.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, released by Pelosi's office late Monday, the San Francisco Democrat asked the department to weigh the benefit of saving the Chronicle and other papers from closure "against the agency's antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior," the paper reported.

Pelosi released her two-page letter after meeting in her Capitol office last week with Chronicle Editor-at-Large Phil Bronstein and Hearst general counsel Eve Burton, where they discussed the future of the paper and federal media shield legislation -- a meeting first reported by E&P last week.

"We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect," Pelosi wrote, according to the paper.

The speaker added that newspaper survival and antitrust laws will be the subject of an upcoming hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, the Chronicle added.

The paper noted that Pelosi's spokesman, Brendan Daly, said the speaker "was moved by the recent announcement by the Hearst Corp., the parent company of The Chronicle, that it would be forced to sell or close the paper if it could not achieve major cost-savings quickly." Hearst has said the paper lost $50 million last year and this year's losses could be worse.

"I am confident that the Antitrust Division, in assessing any concerns that any proposed mergers or other arrangements in the San Francisco area might reduce competition, will take into appropriate account, as relevant, not only the number of daily and weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, but also the other sources of news and advertising outlets available in the electronic and digital age, so that the conclusions reached reflect current market realities," Pelosi also wrote, according to the Chronicle.