Rocky Mountain high

Brandweek, May 8, 2000 by Tony Case

The newspaper war is alive and well in several cities, including Denver, where the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News are slugging it out for readers and advertisers

SAN FRANCISCO, DESPITE SOME RECENT UNCERTAINTY, LOOKS TO remain a two-newspaper town. New life has been breathed into the Seattle daily battle, with both papers now going head to head for morning readers. And with the Tribune Co.'s takeover of Times Mirror, suddenly there are rumblings that the newly joined companies, both of which have operated newspapers in New York City in the past, may be gearing up for yet another round in that rough-and-tumble market.

Who says the daily newspaper war is a thing of the past? The number of daily newspapers, and the number of cities able to sustain two or more big metros, have dwindled dramatically over the past half-century, due to increasing competition from other media, shifting economics and changing reader lifestyles. Many survived by going into business together, forming joint operating agreements (JOAs) that let them share business and production operations while remaining competitive on the news side. But other markets--including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver and Tampa-St. Petersburg--have bucked the trend.

In many of those match-ups, the players are not only surviving, they're thriving. While newspaper sales overall continue to slide, papers in some of the most competitive markets--including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News--lately have managed to boost circulation. Furthermore, the Newspaper Association of America and Scarborough Research recently found that per capita newspaper readership was the greatest in those metropolitan areas home to more than one daily, including Boston, South Florida, New York, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Denver.

Perhaps no modem-day newspaper war has kept industry observers as rapt as the down-and-dirty scrap between MediaNews Group's Denver Past and E.W. Scripps' Rocky Mountain News. For years, rumors have flown that one paper was buying the other, or that the two were planning to form a JOA. It's long been expected that one player or the other would be forced to fold its tent. Top management has been shifted about, even ownership has changed.

But through all the ups and downs on both sides, the Post and RMN remain independent, vibrant and fiercely combative, mystifying many who have watched the papers slug it out. "In the next five years, maybe faster if the economy goes down the toilet, I think one of these dailies will go, but I don't know which one," says Patricia Calhoun, founder and editor of Denver's alternative weekly, Westword, noting that editorially both papers are strong. In fact, each took home a Pulitzer Prize this year for coverage of the Columbine High School shootings, the Post for reporting and the RMN for photography.

Both papers are gaining circulation, although the RMN has the edge at the moment. Last fall, the daily tabloid overtook the long-dominating Post in weekday sales. The RMN gained a staggering 19.3 percent in circulation for the six months ended Sept. 30, compared to a year earlier, selling 396,114 copies through the week, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures. Its Sunday sales grew 16.5 percent to 504,487. Meanwhile, the Post's weekday circ jumped 10.5 percent to 376,549. The Post remained tops in Sunday sales, with 520,049, a 7.3 percent gain.

The fact that the circulation of both the RMN and Post have surged in the last decade, even as overall daily circ has slumped, makes the Denver war all the more fascinating, and even more of an oddity. Just five years ago, the RMN's circ stood at 336,071 weekdays, 449,550 Sunday, while the Post sold 302,125 through the week, 453,032 Sunday.

On the advertising front, the RMN is also beating out the Post. The RMN had 4,845,086 full- and part-run ad inches last year, up 13.5 percent from 1998, while the Post grew 8.3 percent to 4,760,378 inches, according to Competitive Media Reporting. CMR estimated both papers reaped more ad dollars year over year.

The circulation and advertising numbers haven't stopped the Post from claiming top-dog status. "Someday the end of the competition will come and the Denver Post will still be standing," crows a confident MediaNews president/CEO William Dean Singleton--himself partially responsible for the disappearance of the two-paper town, having shut down the Dallas Times-Herald and Houston Post.

Even Singleton admits the Denver war is "almost laughable sometimes. The guys across the street will announce a 90,000 circulation gain. It's easy to do if you give it away," he says, referring to his rival's eye-popping penny-a-day subscription offer. (In fact, both papers have gone after each other with cut-rate home-delivery and newsstand rates.)

"The competition is in a deep hole financially, and everybody who analyzes Scripps' stock knows it," Singleton says of the RMN. "One of these days, it won't be bearable. I don't know if it'll be five, or 10, or 20 years."