San Francisco Guardian collects $21 million in damages from rival newspaper

Posted by Helena Humphrey on March 10, 2010 at 5:02 PM

When newspapers aren't grappling with the question of how to monetise online content, they are most likely battling against the hostile economic climate and advertising revenue downturn. Then, there is the age-old question of how to deal with competitors: Newspapers may be united in the preservation of print, but as the following story illustrates, each newspaper is its own separate entity:

The SF Weekly will be forced to pay rival publication San Francisco Bay $21 million in damages, after a court ruling found the former guilty of lowering the costs of its advertising space with the intent of putting its rival out of business, The San Francisco Chronicle has reported.

The Superior Court totalled that the SF Weekly, a publication belonging to the Village Voice Media Holdings, had been depriving the Guardian of as much as $200,000 a month, since March 2008.

The Village Voice Media Holdings executive associate editor, Andy Van De Voorde, made clear that the company will ask a state appeals court to overturn the ruling. He stated that the Weekly's low-cost ads were not a breach of antitrust laws and had in fact benefited local businesses.

De Voorde also insisted that the Weekly would not go under despite its now heavy debts. The Guardian, however, has been given the legal go-ahead obtained to sell the Weekly's two delivery trucks and confiscate rents the newspaper receives from tenants in its office space in order to begin recuperating the damages.

Source: SFGate