Terry Goddard
A federal judge today refused to force the owners of the Tucson Citizen to continue publishing the newspaper on a temporary basis, essentially ending any hope the afternoon daily would be sold or its staff would keep their jobs.
U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins declined a request by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard to intervene in the matter, saying the state was unable to immediately prove the closure breaks federal anti-trust laws. The judge’s decision means Saturday’s commemorative edition of the state’s oldest newspaper was officially its last.
“Along with thousands of Citizen readers and subscribers throughout Tucson, we are disappointed with the judge’s ruling,” said Goddard’s spokeswoman, Anne Hilby in a statement released this afternoon.
Gannett Co., the media chain that owns the Citizen, announced on Friday it was stopping the presses on the 138-year-old publication after a four-month search turned up no viable buyer for the newspaper. The company plans to modify the paper’s website, tusconcitizen.com, into a hub for local commentary, staffed by at least two people, with no news or sports coverage.
But along with the change, Gannett agreed it would continue to help pay the costs of producing the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, in exchange for a cut of the profits. The Citizen and the Star had long been in a partnership where they shared costs and profits to help preserve two newspapers in the city.
Shortly after the announcement Friday, the attorney general’s office filed suit against Gannett and Lee Enterprises, which owns the Star, saying the two media chains conspired to create a newspaper monopoly there.
Adding fuel to the fire was a California media company, the Santa Monica Media Corp., which said it believed it had made a viable offer to buy the Citizen from Gannett and keep it alive.
Goddard’s office asked the judge to force Gannett to continue printing the Citizen while the details were sorted out.
Earlier today, however, Collins declined. In his ruling, he called the closure “regrettable” and said it caused “irreparable harm” to the community. But in the end, the attorney general’s office did not prove its case that it violated federal laws.
Still, Collins left the door open for the state to continue with its broader anti-trust lawsuit against Gannett and Lee, giving the two companies a June 15 deadline to respond to the allegations of anti-competitive practices. The attorney general’s spokeswoman said the office is still deciding whether to continue with the suit.
Neither Gannett nor Lee immediately returned messages seeking comment on the judge’s ruling.
Shortly after today’s ruling, one of the Citizen‘s remaining staffers, Ryn Gargulinski, posted an entry on its website in the new vein of the content the organization will produce from here on out. “The Tucson Citizen as we knew it,” Gargulinski wrote, “is officially no more.”
In all, nearly 65 people were laid off from the Citizen. The six-day-a-week afternoon newspaper had dropped to fewer than 20,000 print subscribers. Gannett, which shuttered the paper, also owns the Arizona Republic and KPNX-TV (Channel 12) in Phoenix.