MediaNews appeals Trib ruling

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A federal judge Monday said she would not change her mind about a decision last week on the management of the Salt Lake Tribune, giving the newspaper's new owner, Denver-based MediaNews Group, the go-ahead to appeal the ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

MediaNews President Dean Singleton said his attorneys filed an expedited appeal late Monday, just hours after U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell's brief hearing.

Last week Campbell agreed with the Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co., which manages the day-to-day operations of the newspaper, that it was improper for MediaNews to remove Tribune publisher Dominic Welch and chief operating officer Randy Frisch from the board of the Newspaper Agency Corp. and replace them with MediaNews representatives.

The NAC is the company that carries out printing, advertising and distribution under a joint operating agreement the Tribune shares with the Deseret News.

Campbell said she saw nothing new in arguments made by attorneys for MediaNews in their request for a stay of the preliminary injunction, which returns Welch and Frisch to the board.

"The 10th Circuit may disagree. I don't think they will, but it has happened before," Campbell said.

MediaNews President Dean Singleton called the ruling a "formality."

"(The hearing) was four minutes, but it was four minutes required by the (10th Circuit's) rules," he said. "I wouldn't expect her to write a 50-page opinion and then stay it."

Welch said he is now "back on the job" as NAC president.

MediaNews and the Deseret News' representatives to the NAC board had chosen Joseph Zerbey, former president of the York Newspaper Co., which operates the York Daily Record and the York Dispatch in Pennsylvania, as president of the NAC. The latter newspaper is owned by MediaNews.

Singleton said Monday that Campbell's ruling and the pending appeal would not mean Zerbey would be returning to Pennsylvania. MediaNews, he said, would make an announcement later this week about what Zerbey's new "role will be in the interim."

"Joe has moved to Salt Lake to stay," Singleton said.

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E-mail: mtitze@desnews.com