CAPITALISM'S DRIVE TO MONOPOLIZE
Hearst swallows up S.F. Chronicle
By
Gloria La Riva
San Francisco
In a further move toward monopolization, the Hearst Corp.
announced Aug. 6 that it has purchased the San Francisco
Chronicle, this city's morning newspaper and the 11th-biggest
newspaper in the country. Hearst Corp., a multi-billion-dollar
media empire, already owns the San Francisco Examiner, the
Chronicle's afternoon competitor.
At the same time, Hearst President and Chief Executive
Officer Frank Bennack declared that the Examiner is now up for
sale. Given the unfavorable deal demanded for its purchase, the
Examiner will likely remain unsold and merge with the
Chronicle.
Although editorial rivals for over 30 years, the Chronicle
and Examiner have shared operations and profits since 1965
through a Joint Operating Agreement. JOAs are the federal
government's exemption to anti-monopoly laws for newspapers.
JOAs permit newspapers to combine operations and share profits;
the rationale is that one or both would fail otherwise.
Afternoon newspapers are most vulnerable without a JOA,
since they usually have much lower circulation than morning
papers. The Chronicle's daily circulation is 482,268. The
Examiner's is 114,776. On Sunday, they jointly produce a paper
with a circulation of 605,356.
With a JOA granted in 1965, the Chronicle and Examiner
combined under a new corporation--the San Francisco Newspaper
Agency. The papers maintain separate editorial staffs and
operate on opposite ends of the downtown plant. But they share
production workers, presses, delivery system, advertising and
other facilities.
The SFNA employs some 2,000 printers, engravers, drivers,
vendors, press, circulation and advertising workers. The
Examiner also has its own staff of 217; the Chronicle has 375
editors and reporters.
With the purchase of the Chronicle as well as the SFNA,
Hearst obtains all the production and delivery facilities the
SFNA owns. Thus the Examiner is doomed, since it has no
meaningful production system to accompany its name.
The announced sale of the Examiner is only a formality to
meet the legal requirements of the JOA, as Hearst executives
admitted.
That means San Francisco will soon join the long list of
cities that have gone from several daily newspapers down to two
papers, then to one. In a word: monopoly.
In the last 15 years, 12 JOAs have been terminated, from
Miami to Pittsburgh to Knoxville, Tenn.
But Professor Robert Terrell told Workers World that there
already is a monopoly in San Francisco. Terrell is chairperson
of the Department of Mass Communications at California State
University at Hayward.
He maintained: "As someone once said, there's not a dime's
difference between the two. They claim they are in competition
with each other, but there is precious little competition, nor
difference of philosophy with regards to how they cover the Bay
area."
In particular, Terrell--who is African American--spoke of
the newspapers' refusal to cover the issues in the Bay area's
communities of color in a meaningful way.
"The sports columnists are 20 to 30 years behind the times.
It's almost a colonial mentality the way they cover sports
news.
"San Francisco is 35 percent Asian, but you wouldn't know it
by reading the Chronicle's society page, which represents the
rich, white San Francisco of old. That goes for the Examiner,
too."
When asked about the executives' claim that jobs will not be
affected, Terrell concluded: "It's just a matter of time before
the principle of economies of scale kick in. They'll say, `We
don't need two sports editors, two editorial-page editors, we
don't need two style sections.
"But San Francisco is a union town, and I think they
remember what happened in your strike."
In 1994, some 2,700 workers of the Agency, Chronicle and
Examiner struck the newspapers for 11 days in a successful
strike that defeated the companies' strike-breaking plans.
The papers are 100-percent union, with 10 unions
representing the workers. In 1995, a 10-year contract was
signed with the unions, set to expire along with the JOA.
Most of the workers are employees of the Agency under the
JOA. With the pending merger, the Agency would be defunct. That
leaves the workers and unions vulnerable, regardless of
management's promises.
Meanwhile, very little financial information about the sale
is forthcoming. Hearst Corp., founded in 1887, is privately
owned. Its worth is estimated at almost $2.4 billion.
It owns 12 newspapers and magazines, and owns or controls 26
TV stations.
The Chronicle is also privately owned. So the paper's value
when sold is a guarded secret.
Chronicle Publishing Co. owns several newspapers in the
United States, along with television stations, including
Channel 4, KRON in the city.
Joint Operating Agreements were never about preserving
newspaper diversity. For 31 years in San Francisco, the JOA
allowed the two entities to amass a greater fortune by
splitting costs than they would have made by operating
alone.
This in turn gave them an opportunity to use their larger
share of profits to expand their holdings and control more
media outlets.
The future for the workers remains to be seen. Their union's
resolve to defend their jobs and contracts--not only now but
also when the contracts expire in 2005--will be decisive.
It is certain, though, that the pace of monopoly in media is
quickening. The Chronicle and Examiner are no exception to the
inevitable concentration of wealth in fewer hands under
capitalism.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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