My factual question is this: Which US cities have more than one daily? I am also interested if the newspapers are in competition because I’m not sure whether or not to count the Detriot Free Press/News as 2 seperate papers. Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.
So to start, Pittsburgh has competing dailies: the Post-Gazette and the Tribune-Review. What else?
Seattle has the Times and the Post-Intelligencer, however only their newsrooms technically are in competion because of a Joint Operating Agreement, which has the Times running the business side of things (selling advertising, printing, etc.)
This is of recent interest in Western Washington, because the Times’ ownership is seeking to dissolve the JOA, which could mean that Hearst would close the P-I. Although there are other scenarios.
A judge recently ruled in favor of the P-I that the Times couldn’t trigger a clause to end the JOA. Here’s a recent P-I story about it.
Personally, I’d hate to see either paper close.
Los Angeles: The LA Times and LA Daily News
New York: NY Times, NY Post, and NY Daily News
Chicago: Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times
Boston: Boston Globe and Boston Herald
All of the above are in direct competition and are based in the same cities. As mentioned above, many cities (i.e. Seattle, Denver - I think this still works, and Detroit) have JOA’s, where the papers aren’t technically in competition, but do have an internal competitiveness. Then, when the JOA breaks up, there is fierce competition - take a look at what happened to the San Francisco Examiner. The Hearst family is probably kissing pictures of the Fang family every day for screwing that one up so badly.
And then you can also look at neighboring cities that each have their own newspapers:
Minneapolis-St. Paul - Minneapolis Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press
Tampa-St. Pete - Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg times
San Fran area - San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News
Washington, DC, has the Washington Post and the Washington Times, which are definitely in competition. The Times is owned by Rev. Sung Myung Moon and is very right-wing.
The Post is more liberal than the Times, but is not as liberal as some would have you believe.
The L.A. Daily News is so far behind the Times that I usually forget it exists. The competition is decided by far.
As a brief aside…I interviewed at the Times last year (June, I think) and was pretty much told by the Marketing Director that competition and profitability wasn’t even an object. The Reverend’s goal appears to be to HAVE a newspaper at his disposal when he wants one…nothing more.
So they told me, at any rate.
Also, there are 2 editions of the (Chicago) Tribune and Sun Times every day. The morning addition, and the evening addition. The evening edition is basically the morning addition with a few extra pages wrapped around it. The extra pages contain the closing market information for the day, and the latest headlines.
Albany, NY, has the Albany Times-Union, plus the Daily Gazette. The Gazette is based in Schenectady, but both papers cover both cities and are sold in both.
The TU does better in Albany, of course, and the Gazette in Schenectady.
Miami has the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish version, with a more Latin slant (and I DO mean slant) on the topics. The are owned by the same company (Knight Ridder) and use the same building, but one is not merely a translation of the other.
I lived in DC and it was months before I knew something other than the Post existed. It definitely isn’t like the Chicago Tribune vs Chicago Sun-Times or the New York Papers.
In NYC the Times seems more in competition with the Wall Street Journal and the Post and Daily News seem to go at it.
Madison, WI has the Wisconsin State Journal (morning) and The Capital Times (afternoon). What’s even more interestnig is that they are both published by the same company, but the WSJ is conservative (for Madison anyways) and the Cap Times is pretty liberal.
St. Louis has the Post-Dispatch and may or may not still have the Globe-Democrat. I know that both ran together at one time, but I haven’t seen the G-D for sale around here for a long time. It used to be that newsstands around here sold the P-D and the G-D, plus both Chicago papers, but now the only St. Louis paper I see is the P-D. I don’t know if that means that the G-D is out of business or if there just weren’t enough people buying it in Springfield to continue selling it here.
The L.A. Daily News started out as the Valley News, so the emphasis tends to be in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys. So it’s more like two neighboring communities with separate papers with some overlap than a true competition between two papers serving the same area.
Here in Central PA, we have the Patriot-News, which largely serves the Harrisburg/East Shore area and the Sentinel, which serves the West Shore. Even though the Patriot has excellent coverage of the West Shore, that’s not its primary focus. The Sentinel is almost exclusively West Shore news, and publishes a daily edition in Carlisle and a weekly edition in Shippensburg that features Shippensburg news.
Both the Patriot and Sentinel are available pretty much everywhere on the West Shore.
More than y’all wanted to know, I’m sure.
Robin
Oh, and HeyHomie, according to this page, the Globe-Democrat ceased publication in 1986.
Robin
I work for a company that does quite a bit of newspaper advertising, so this actually comes up quite a bit. MOST larger metro cities will have more than one paper, though only one “major” daily paper (or one paper anyone outside of the city has ever heard of).
The major cities with two papers have all been mentioned (though you can add the Dallas Morning News/Ft. Worth Star Telegram to the ‘two cities so close you can get either paper’ bracket). For my own personal advertising experiences, the only ones that really come up are LA, NY, Boston and Chicago. And each of those has one that’s significantly larger than the other (the Chicago Tribune has a circulation over a million, while the Sun Times I believe is somewhere around 350,000).
A lot of the larger metro cities will have many localized, or regional newspapers. For example, in LA, the LA Times reaches the whole area. But there’s also the Orange County Register, Riverside Press Enterprise, or even the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin if you’re trying to reach those areas.
There are a few websites that do nothing but list newspapers, but I can’t remember them offhand.
Philadelphia: Inquirer (broadsheet) and Daily News (tabloid).
They’ve dropped the city names from their banners, but most of us here in the TC’s still think of them as either the Mpls or St Paul paper.
Their political stances do differ, with the Star-Trib to the left and the Pioneer Press not exactly to the right, but nearer the center.
The Star-Trib is .50 and the PP is .25–making it the much better buy for a quick perusal over some scrambled eggs before work.
Phoenix has the Arizona Republic and the Mesa Tribune.
Denver has the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountian News.
Ave daily circulation: (Mon-Fri or Sat)
AZ Repulbic 451K ('01) 432K (Sep 03) Gannett
Rocky Mtn News 383K ('01) 289K (Sep 03) Scripps-Howard
Denver Post 375K ('01) 289K (Sep 03) Media News
Mesa-Tribune 253K?('01) 78K (Sep 03) Tribune Co ('01 numbers may be over different dates)
data from:
http://www.freep.com/jobspage/links/top100.htm
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:e7vGbnKv2x4J:www.accessabc.com/reader/100630_0102_RPRD.pdf+mesa+tribune+circulation+numbers&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://abcas2.accessabc.com/ecirc/newssearchus.asp
Albuquerque has a morning and evening paper under two different name (Journal and Tribune, respectively), but I believe they’re done by the same company. Would that be a JOA or just one company printing two different papers under two different names instead of, say, Journal and Afternoon Journal?
Cincinnati has the Cincinnati Post and the Cincinnati Enquirer.