Tribune fights JOA changes

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Managers of the Salt Lake Tribune are again before U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell — this time asking her to stop the newspaper's new owner, Dean Singleton, from making changes to the joint operating agreement the Tribune shares with the Deseret News.

The Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co., which manages the newspaper, also seeks to add the Deseret News as a defendant in the case.

In December Campbell dealt a blow to the Tribune managers' effort to block AT&T Broadband from selling the Tribune for $200 million to Singleton's Denver-based newspaper chain, MediaNews.

Campbell said the managers failed to show how MediaNews' acquisition of the newspaper "would be adverse to the public interest," or would cause the Tribune to "lose its independent voice and unique characteristics."

The managers threatened to appeal the case to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court but have yet to do so.

Instead, they have amended their original complaint before Campbell, attempting to add the Deseret News as a defendant and arguing that changes to the Newspaper Agency Corp. — the jointly owned company that handles printing, advertising and distribution for both newspapers — will damage the Tribune assets.

The same week he purchased the Tribune, Singleton met with the NAC board and made a number of changes.

Tribune publisher Dominic Welch was removed as the NAC president and Randy Frisch, chief operating officer of Tribune Publishing, was removed as a member of the board.

Singleton and MediaNews Chief Financial Officer Jody Lodovic were added to the board, joining Deseret News Chairman L. Glen Snarr and Deseret News Publisher Jim Wall. Singleton was elected chairman and Snarr vice chairman.

Joseph Zerbey, president of the York Newspaper Co., published as part of a joint operating agreement between the York Daily Record and the York Dispatch, York, Pa. (the latter newspaper owned by MediaNews), will move to Salt Lake City to become NAC president, the position formerly held by Welch.

The new NAC board also issued a 32-page "Amendment and Restatement of Agreement" to the JOA that facilitates the Deseret News' move from afternoon to morning seven days a week. It now publishes mornings only on weekends and Thanksgiving Day.