The Detroit Newspaper War was a take-no-prisoners battle between the two largest newspaper publishing companies Gannett and Knight-Ridder; it was one of America’s costliest newspaper wars.

The circulation war was so intense that it brought both newspapers to the brink of failure, Knight-Ridder and Gannett announced their application for a JOA under the newspaper preservation act. (1970) The application tagged the Free Pres as the failing newspaper. Testimony described a downward spiral of financial losses, a second-place share of advertising and declining circulation, the 100-year Joint operating agreement ended in 2026, only 36 years later.

The JOA had tremendous public and union opposition, and the DOJ initially recommended against approval of the JOA, it was barley approved.
The JOA Hubris also contributed to the newspaper strike/lockout of July 13, 1995, to Dec. 17, 2001, which I was a strike director on. During the strike, both papers saw huge readership declines from which they never recovered. (The National Labor Relations Board ruled on June 19, 1997, that the newspapers had “caused” and “prolonged” but a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Federal Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the NLRB.

After all this I was surprised that the newspapers decided to end the JOA, which saves them millions of dollars every year by combining operations until I looked deeper.

On August 3, 2005, Gannett announced that it would sell The News to MediaNews Group and purchase the Free Press from the Knight Ridder company

On January 26, 2026, USA today announced that they are purchasing the Detroit News from the MediaNews Group, the then-chairman of Gannett, Al Neuharth, envisioned the startup newspaper and Gannett’s board of directors approved the launch of the national newspaper, USA Today, on December 5, 1981. In 2025 Gannett announced it will be changing its name to USA TODAY Co., Inc., effective November 18.

Now that both the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News are owned and operated by USA Today (Gannett) will this arrangement lead to true compilation, which was the goal of the newspaper preservation act and will both newspapers survive? I am very skeptical.

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