Fantasy JOA for Detroit?

By Joel Thurtell

In January, joelontheroad.com broke news about the start of a possible Joint Operating Agreement between my blog and the Detroit News and Free Press.

 

 

I didn’t get much response.

 

In fact, the only response I got came five days after my January 13 JOA scoop when a Gannett lawyer brought it up during the arbitration hearing into my $500 donation in 2004 to Michigan Democrats.

 

 

Gannett’s mouthpiece wondered what I meant by mentioning a JOA between joelontheroad.com and Detroit newspapers. I think he was trying to catch me off guard. Probably wanted to embarrass me. But hey, I learned from Gannett and Knight-Ridder — what’s to be embarrassed about a JOA?

 

He waved a printout of my blog at me. It had my JOA quip.

 

 

It was a joke, I told him.

 

 

That was true.

 

 

Then.

 

 

What I was referring to was real enough — a conversation I had with one of the Free Press brass about the possibility of a joint production agreement between Gannett’s Detroit Media Partnership and my then days-old blog.

 

I was beginning to realize that making money off my blog — “monetizing” it, as we say in the Blogosphere — would not be easy. I could already sense negative cash flow and the beginning of a downward spiral. Naturally, the idea of getting into a news monopoly jumped into my head.

 

The conversation happened at a going-away party for a crew of us old-time Freepsters who were taking buyouts last November in what turns out to have been Round One of DMP’s downsizing. (Last week, management at the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press announced they want to add 150 more names to the 110 who left last year for a total attrition of roughly 13 percent)

 

 

Anyway, at the party, I happened to be chatting with Free Press Editor Paul Anger. I wisecracked that in a year or so I might come back to work out a joint operating deal with Gannett.

 

 

He wisecracked back that he hoped Gannett would “have better lawyers this time.”

 

 

I learned later that Gannettoids felt they got rooked in the JOA with Knight-Ridder, though Gannett got to name three members to the five-member JOA board.

 

 

Sure, my JOA comment was a joke last fall, despite the Gannett lawyer’s attempt to fish some other meaning from it.

 

 

But I’m not joking now. Over dinner a couple nights ago at the monthly meeting of the Plymouth Press Corps in Plymouth’s Box Bar, with four current Free Press staffers on hand, the hot-button subject we call “the future of newspapers” was depressing everyone, given the week’s news about another set of buyouts.

 

 

The subject is surrounded by fatalism. Staffers are wondering, How long will the Detroit papers last? Will Gannett close the Free Press? The News is hanging by a thread. Will it be dumped?

 

 

My response to all the doom and gloom: Gannett will sell, not close, the Detroit papers.

 

 

“But who would buy? Nobody in their right mind would want to own a newspaper,” a Freepster said.

 

Others listed as nearly bankrupt Media News, owner of the Detroit News, McClatchy, which bought and dismantled Knight-Ridder, former owner of the Free Press, and the Tribune Company. Three of many news organizations in deep weeds.

 

 

“Look at the Tribune — they’re selling their tower in Chicago,” I was told.

 

Yes, Tribune owner Sam Zell has listed the gothic landmark on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue for sale. Note, though, that he hasn’t listed the news business for sale.

 

 

That’s because there still is money to be made from newspapers.

 

 

Despite all the yammering about Detroit, Gannett is making money.

 

 

But they may be sick of trying to milk Detroit.

 

 

If Gannett ever decides to sell its Detroit papers, I know where they can find a buyer.

 

 

Me.

 

 

What am I, nuts?

 

 

Well, okay, maybe.

 

 

 

 

One thing’s sure, though — I won’t need to be wealthy.

 

 

 

 

When they decide to sell, Gannett will have unwound so much value from the papers that they’ll let them go for a song.

I’ll be glad to sing for my papers.

 

 

But I’ll give them a chance not to hear my basso rotundo: Enter into a JOA with joelontheroad.com.

 

 

Just as Gannett was the dominant partner in the 1989 JOA it had with Knight-Ridder, so the dominant partner in the DMP-joelontheroad.com JOA will be, guess who?

 

 

Right.

 

 

Me.

 

 

I will have a five-member governing board, just as there was in 1989. Gannett will have one seat on the board. Joelontheroad.com will have three seats. I’ll be chairman. First people I ask to serve on the board will be former state Sen. John Kelly and former Plymouth Community Crier owner Ed Wendover, the two brave men who lost their legal fight to block the JOA back in the 1980s.

 

 

Not so fast, guys. It’s not over.

 

 

The fifth member?

 

 

Why, he will be Lou Mleczko, president of Newspaper Guild Local 22, which also fought the JOA.

 

 

I’m not afraid of those old anti-JOA guys, because this JOA will be worker-friendly, pro-journalism and anti-corporate bullshit.

 

 

(In case the Gannett lawyer is reading, I’d better stress that his is purely a FANTASY JOA)

 

This new JOA will benefit Gannett shareholders, too, just as Gannett now benefits Media News, the company that operates the Detroit News. Gannett will get 5 percent of net profits made by the new JOA, like the cut they’re sharing, in theory, with Media News. (I hear Gannett isn’t coughing up for Media News)

 

 

 

 

I can make this happen, folks, because unlike the News and Free Press, I actually have a plan.Gannett execs who want to continue JOA talks know how to reach me.Oh, and not to worry about the quality of the lawyering this time around. I plan to hire the Royal Oak firm of Martens, Ice, Klass, Legghio & Israel. They know how to trump Gannett. They beat Gannett in my political activity arbitration.Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com