So much for that newspaper war.
Just a month ago, my old boss Nolan Finley promised that hostilities between The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press would resume. Then, we were told The Detroit News Sunday paper would return, after many decades away.
Now, not so much.
Finley is an old-timer, a five-decade veteran at The News. He is one of the few in town who remembered a time when The News and Freep were rival newspapers. Competitors, not partners.
“War on,” Finley wrote on Dec. 27, at the expiration of a 36-year Joint Operating Agreement between the papers.
On its face, the JOA allowed the papers to pool business resources. In reality, it cemented The Detroit News in a no. 2 position that held despite being better than the Freep.
What would The News be, on its own two feet? We all wanted to see it.
“That JOA ended today,” Finley wrote. “That means over the next few weeks the combined business operations that bound together all functions of the two papers except the newsrooms will unwind. Then the battle will be back on, unincumbered [sic] by Justice Department restraints, just two newspapers competing for readers in the free market, this time on many more fronts and with an arsenal we could only have dreamed of back when our only weapon was the printed paper.”
This was a nice thought, but naive. One month after Finley celebrated the return of the newspaper war, The Detroit News has waved the white flag.
The Detroit News will sell to USA Today. Its owner, Gannett, owns the Free Press. The News has moved from the frying pan into the fire.
Gannett has never valued the Detroit News. One of the first stories I heard from colleagues, on entering the Detroit News family, was how Gannett, years earlier, sold The News just to buy the Freep.
Apparently, whatever antitrust concerns that led to the JOA in 1989 do not exist in 2026.
MediaNews Group, The Detroit News’s owner until the sale closes, never wanted to operate a newspaper in Detroit. Under the JOA, it never needed to. It could be a 5% partner to Gannett’s 95% and would bring in revenue without needing to run the shop.
The functionaries in Detroit would handle the journalism and Gannett would handle the business. It was a perfect arrangement.
Faced with the prospect of really running a Detroit newspaper, Media News sold out. It took the money and ran.
The end of the JOA didn’t resume the newspaper war. It ended the illusion that Detroit is a two-newspaper town. It’s not and has not been for more than a decade.
The one point of departure for the two papers—that The News was conservative and the Freep was liberal—has evaporated.
As fellow Detroit News alum Charlie LeDuff just wrote, Finley’s editorial page hasn’t endorsed a Republican candidate for president since Mitt Romney in 2012.
There is a conservative element in Metro Detroit, but The News no longer speaks for those people.
Donald Trump is the most popular and consequential Republican president since Ronald Reagan. Rather than embrace him, The News became another Never Trump outfit in a Michigan media full of them.
This is not the way to distinguish one’s self in a media market overrun by Democrats. It’s certainly no way to win a newspaper war. Joining them isn’t beating them.
Now, with the Gannett acquisition, everybody can stop pretending.
James David Dickson is host of the James Dickson Podcast. Join him in conversation on X at @downi75.
