Closing
The end occurred when the Gannett Co. made the publishers of the Banner a large offer to terminate the joint operating agreement. The offer was approximately $65 million, likely more than any profit that could have been made by the continued publication of the Banner, so it ceased to exist. (Interestingly, this was not considered by the Justice Department to be an antitrust violation, but when Gannett attempted to do the same thing with its Honolulu Advertiser and the evening paper in that joint operating agreement, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, only a few months later, it was prosecuted as such, the merger was forestalled, and both papers continued to operate until 2010.)
The Banner's final edition was published on Friday, February 20, 1998. The announcement to close was made public the previous Monday, February 16. Several of the Banner's popular features and reporters, including columnists Mary Hance ("Ms. Cheap") and Joe Biddle (sports), immediately went to The Tennessean. Longtime Banner sports editor Fred Russell wrote a weekly column for The Tennessean for one year after the Banner folded. In doing so, Russell completed his 70th year in journalism.
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