The Detroit News, Free Press to change owners

DETROIT — Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper company, is buying the Detroit Free Press from Knight Ridder Inc., and MediaNews Group Inc., which owns the Salt Lake Tribune, will buy The Detroit News from Gannett, the companies announced Wednesday.

Gannett and Knight Ridder also announced an exchange of newspapers in Florida, Washington and Idaho. Terms of the transactions were not disclosed.

Gannett is acquiring the Tallahassee Democrat in Florida and will receive an undisclosed amount of cash from Knight Ridder. Knight Ridder is purchasing Gannett's newspaper in Boise, The Idaho Statesman, and two Washington state newspapers, The Olympian in Olympia and The Bellingham Herald. All the swaps are subject to regulatory approval.

The Detroit News, which now primarily publishes in the afternoon, will become a morning publication, the companies announced. And instead of publishing a combined paper on Saturdays and Sundays, the News and Free Press will each publish separate Saturday editions and the Free Press alone will publish a Sunday newspaper.

"Two daily newspapers, competing editorially in the city of Detroit. That's the bottom line of today's transactions. Detroit is the winner here, and Gannett is proud we were able to make this happen," Craig Dubow, Gannett's president and CEO, said in a statement.

Knight Ridder said it is selling its partnership interest in the Detroit Newspaper Agency LP, the joint operating agency that handles business, advertising, production and delivery operations under a 1989 joint operating agreement. Under the new arrangement, Gannett will be the general partner and MediaNews Group will be the limited partner.

Knight Ridder Chairman and CEO Tony Ridder noted that Gannett had run the business operations of the two Detroit newspapers since the papers' joint operating agreement 16 years ago. "Now, we feel the need to go our own way," he said. "In all of the cities where we have newspapers, we run the business. That is the arrangement that works best for us."

Gannett, headquartered in McLean, Va., publishes 101 daily newspapers in the United States, including USA Today. Knight Ridder, based in San Jose, Calif., is the nation's second largest newspaper publisher.

Privately held MediaNews Group of Denver, headed by Dean Singleton, owns The Denver Post and 39 other daily newspapers in nine states. John Morton, an independent newspaper analyst in Silver Spring, Md., said The Detroit News has been struggling recently with declining circulation, partly because it publishes primarily in the afternoon.