Dried ink

17 March 2016 By Jennifer Saba Follow @jennifersaba

The Justice Department sued to stop a $56 mln merger of southern California’s largest newspapers, saying a monopoly would result. Yet regulators approved competitively riskier deals involving the likes of DirecTV. It’s as if they never heard of falling readership and ad sales.

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The U.S. Department of Justice on March 17 sued Tribune Publishing, seeking to block its bid to buy Freedom Communications for $56 million as it emerges from bankruptcy. Tribune is the owner of the Los Angeles Times while Freedom publishes the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

The Justice Department cited concerns that if the deal were to go through, Tribune would control 98 percent of newspaper sales in Orange County and 81 percent of English-language newspaper sales in Riverside.

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