Chuck Taylor with copies of the Seattle Union Record. Photo by Deborah Wang. View more Seattle P–I photos.

Cross-Town Rivalry

03/11/2009

History is filled with tales of classic newspaper rivalries: the New York Times and the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner. The Seattle Times and the Seatttle Post–Intelligencer have been fierce competitors for more than a century. But with the recent end of the paper version of the P–I, Seattle is now a one newspaper town. KUOW's Deborah Wang takes a look at the longtime rivalry.

If you're a newspaper reporter in a two newspaper town, there's nothing quite as sweet as a scoop. And on the day I visit reporter Andrea James at the P–I, she's got one.

James: "Tomorrow I am going to have a story on a major company that The Seattle Times doesn't have and I am very excited about that!"

James is 27 years old and a business reporter at the P–I. She covers local retail companies like Starbucks, Costco, and Amazon. She also does labor and economics stories.

James: "I'm putting it in source editor. The bottom's not finished."

James pulls up her chair to editor Margaret Santjer's desk and peers over Santjer's shoulder. They go through the story line by line.

Santjer: "This stuff is good, this is when he is talking about how they have designed the stuff 'cause they are testing it and when you are on a mountain and your brain doesn't work right."

The story is about a new clothing line being developed by local retailer Eddie Bauer. James says only the P–I and the Wall Street Journal have the story. It'll be splashed across the next day's front page.

Scoops are an especially big deal at the P–I because reporters here are typically outnumbered by their rivals at the Times. The P–I has just over 100 reporters, editors and photographers. The Seattle Times has about 150, although its newsroom has been much larger in the past.

In the business section, James and her colleagues are outnumbered almost 2–to–1. She says she has to work very hard just to keep up.

James: "If I'm at an event with a Seattle Times reporter, it's really funny because I try to make sure I stay there as long as they do, if not longer, and then I interview people and I take note of who they are interviewing. Then I run up and I will ask them questions and I will say, what did she ask you? And I do this all the time."

And that may be the essence of what life is like in a two newspaper town. You have to work hard because there is always someone out there trying to beat you to a story. Every single day. Art Thiel is a long time Sports Columnist for the P–I.

Thiel: "The competitive juices don't get flowing in a one newspaper town. It doesn't mean that there isn't good journalism going on, it's just that it's not the same as knowing there is a rival out to try to beat you. And your job, of course, is to beat their brains in."

Now, it's hard to generalize, but if you ask competing reporters how their papers differ, here are some of the things they say: P–I reporters call themselves the underdogs, they say they are scrappier, hungrier and more aggressive; Times reporters describe themselves as more analytical, more investigative, less sensationalist.

But those are just generalizations. Eric Pryne is a Seattle Times business reporter. He's been at the Times since the 1970s. Back then, he says, the stereotypes about the two papers were much more pronounced.

Pryne: "The stereotypes back in the '60s and '70s was that the Times was Fairview Fanny, that's the street that went by the Times building. It was a stodgy, conservative, Chamber of Commerce publication. And the P–I was a paper that wasn't one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. Especially when it fit its preconceived ideological agenda."

In the 1980s, Pryne covered Washington D.C. for the Times. He competed head–to–head against the P–I reporter Joel Connelly, who is now a P–I columnist. The two of them recently came to KUOW's studios to reminisce. Connelly remembers the time the P–I broke a story about a sex scandal involving former Senator Brock Adams. In those days, the P–I published in the morning, and the Times in the afternoon, so the P–I often scooped the Times. But Connelly says the Times, and his rival Eric Pryne, mounted a three–year–long investigation of the Senator, which uncovered the entire sordid tale.

Connelly: "I remember one time flying back to Washington, D.C., and there, on the same plane, was Eric flying back to take his portion of the journalism award that they won for that project. A little bit of enamel ground off my teeth on that flight."

But the really odd thing about this longtime rivalry is that for more than 20 years, the two newspapers have actually been business partners. In 1983, they entered into what is called a Joint Operating Agreement, or JOA. That allows the two newspapers to compete on the news side, but cooperate on the business side.

Bill Richards is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now covers the media for Crosscut.com. He spent three years covering the JOA for The Seattle Times. He says in the early years, the JOA worked well for both papers.

Richards: "They were able to cut their costs, 'cause they both didn't have to have printing presses, they all printed off one set of presses and distributed with one set of trucks, and it effectively kept out competitors. They were able to go to their advertisers and basically work together to set rates, ad rates, which meant that they were the big game in town, the only game in town in print. It was a great deal, it was a sweet deal, and during the 1990s, they made a great deal of money."

But the business relationship began to sour around the turn of the millennium. The dot–com bust put a severe strain on revenue, as did a seven week long strike by union employees at both newspapers.

In 2003, Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen made a move to end the JOA. If he had succeeded, it probably would have meant the end of the smaller P–I as well. Bill Richards says the Times spent millions of dollars making its case in court.

Richards: "Frank Blethen has The Seattle Times logo tattooed on his ankle, and he's a fierce fighter, and I guess he thought he saw a shot and decided to take it. It was a mistake in retrospect, because it hurt them."

Wang: "It weakened them?"

Richards: "Sure, it put them further in debt."

The battle ended in stalemate. After years in court, the Times and the P–I finally settled in 2007. The JOA remained intact, and the P–I survived. Times reporter Eric Pryne and P–I columnist Joel Connelly recall what happened the night after the settlement was announced.

Pryne: "Understandably, there was a lot of jubilation and celebration in the P–I newsroom, and some P–I staff people who perhaps had been celebrating excessively came over to the little park in front of the Times and thought it would be appropriate to relieve themselves on the lawn."

Connelly: "I was not one of them, although a poll in The Stranger voted me most likely to have done so."

This may seem a bit like a high school sports rivalry, and it's easy to build up the battle between the two newsrooms, but the fact is there are plenty of friendships that span the two papers, even a handful of marriages. And there was one moment in the not–too–distant past when people from both newsrooms came together in a sort of joint enterprise. It was during that seven–week–long newspaper–guild strike that started in 2000. Employees from both papers were out on the picket lines, and since they had nothing better to do, they decided to publish a newspaper.

Chuck Taylor is sitting on his living room floor, using keys to pry open a cardboard box tightly sealed with tape.

Wang: "This has been in your basement since then?"

Taylor: "Yeah, sealed up, since then."

He pulls out piles of slightly musty, tabloid size newspapers. Emblazoned across the top of each front page, the words Seattle Union Record, published by striking employees of The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post–Intelligencer.

Taylor: "It was cool — people from the copy desks working in the same room editing stories, the photo desk was merged. I think we had six or seven Pulitzer Prize winners working together."

At the time of the strike, Taylor had been at the Times for 16 years, working as a reporter and an editor. He says he had never really socialized with people from the P–I. The other paper was mysterious, Kremlin–like, he says. But then he became managing editor of the strike newspaper, and for seven weeks, he worked side by side with his former rivals.

Taylor: "There was a lot of great camaraderie between the two staffs when they came together at that point and I think there were a lot of friendships forged there too that continue to this day. I think that's why you find few people at the Times who are happy about how this is playing out for the P–I."

And that's the other thing about a newspaper rivalry. Reporters may compete, they may work their butts off to beat each other, they may even resort to occasional trickery, but in the end, it's still like that high school sports rivalry. Playing against a good competitor makes you a better player, and you definitely want the other team to show up at the game. I'm Deborah Wang, KUOW News.

© Copyright 2009, KUOW