Pittsburgh Press - Joint Operating Agreement

Joint Operating Agreement

In 1924, the Press was acquired by the Scripps-Howard Syndicate. During the 1960s, it entered into a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) with the competing Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Post-Gazette had previously purchased and merged with the Hearst Corporation's Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph leaving just itself and the much larger Pittsburgh Press.

The Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) was to be managed by the Pittsburgh Press owners (E. W. Scripps Company) as the Press had the larger circulation and was the stronger of the two papers.

Under the JOA, the Post-Gazette became a 6 day morning paper, and the Pittsburgh Press became a 6 day afternoon paper in addition to publishing the sole Sunday paper.

This arrangement was in effect until Scripps began bargaining with the Teamsters union, whose contract with the Press expired in 1991. After a very lengthy Teamsters strike in 1992, Scripps sold the Press to Block Communications, the owners of the much smaller JOA paper, the Post-Gazette, who promptly ceased printing the Press and folded it into the Post-Gazette. In return, Scripps received The Monterey County Herald. The sale required a ruling by the U.S. Department of Justice as the JOA was regulated by the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970.

The outcome was a surprise to many people in Pittsburgh, as the Press had a much higher profile, and was the larger of the two JOA papers, both in company size and in circulation. Before the 1992 strike, many assumed that the smaller Post-Gazette would cease publication when the JOA expired. The departure of the Press also meant that Scripps was exiting the Pittsburgh market entirely.