Monopoly, Detroit style
10/16/08
[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
They don’t get to pass go.
They won’t collect two hundred smackers.
Nobody issues them a “get out of jail free” card, either.
The prison for most of the staff of the formerly independent Observer & Eccentric newspapers will be in downtown Detroit.
They’ll be tossing the dice as they move from Schoolcraft Road in Livonia to, well, not exactly the RenCen.
West Lafayette ain’t Boardwalk, but that will be the new digs come late this year for much of the Observer & Eccentric suburban chain of newspapers’ editorial and administrative folks.
According to Gannett mogul Kristi Bowden, they’ll join the staffs of the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, two other formerly independent newspapers that now belong, like the O & E, to Virginia-based media colossus Gannett.
‘Course, it wasn’t s’posed to be like this. There are anti-trust laws that supposedly protect the public from monopolists. But Gannett wangled with the now defunct Knight-Ridder chain in 1989 to get government approval of a Joint Operating Agreement between the Free Press and News. Supposedly, they were to be two editorially independent voices, joined for advertising and delivery.
Anybody believe that one?
In 2005, K-R sold the Freep to Gannett, but Gannett held onto the News.
A guy named Dean Singleton operates the News, providing an invisible fig leaf for Gannett, the true owner.
You’d think the Justice Department would smell the skunk.
When you have a bigger skunk in the White House, it’s hard to detect lesser stinkers.
Now the News, the Free Press and the O & E will be putting their little houses on the same square.
How long till they print one paper?
If they merge editorial duties, they’ll need a new name.
How about “Detroit Newpee”?
Think I’m kidding?
A few months ago, I reported that to cut costs, Gannett early this year closed seven restrooms in the main News and Free Press building.
Kristi Bowden didn’t say how many O & E people will be moving their workplaces into that building.
In this way, some form of newspaper rivalry will be preserved.
The competition for infrastructure will be strong with the influx of Eccentrics.
One solution: a row of alternately red and blue porta-johns on West Lafayette.
They could double as advertising kiosks.
About THAT I am kidding.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
