Court papers detail News' frustrations with Tribune

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Federal court documents show the Deseret News sought for years to resolve its differences with the competing Salt Lake Tribune before consenting to the Tribune's pending sale to Denver-based MediaNews Group.

For the past three years, the Deseret News has become increasingly frustrated by the Tribune's control over the printing, distribution and advertising for both newspapers and particularly what the Deseret News saw as obstructions to the paper's plans to go to morning publication.

The documents are among hundreds of pages generated since Tribune management sued in federal court Dec. 1 to block the purchase of the newspaper by MediaNews Group. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday before U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell.

The Tribune's owners sold their paper to Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) in 1997. TCI in turn was acquired by AT&T, which elected to sell the paper to MediaNews. Former owners and officers of the Tribune have a contract to manage the paper and claim an option to buy the paper in 2002.

The Tribune's management company argues that the option precludes the sale of the Tribune by AT&T to MediaNews and that the Deseret News has no authority to approve or disapprove a sale. However, AT&T's response to the lawsuit notes that the Tribune's own attorneys acknowledged in an opinion written regarding the TCI purchase that any future sale of the Tribune's NAC shares would "require the consent of Deseret News Publishing."

While not a party to the lawsuit, the Deseret News has a keen interest in the ownership of the Tribune because the Tribune would remain a partner in printing, distributing and selling advertising for both newspapers. Since 1952, the Tribune and Deseret News have shared those operations and split the profits through a jointly owned company called the Newspaper Agency Corp., or NAC, while keeping independent editorial voices.

Relations between executives of both newspapers who made up NAC's board deteriorated when the Deseret News stepped up its efforts to switch from afternoon to morning publication.

The Deseret News, whose circulation is roughly half that of the morning Tribune, sees the change as a matter of survival.