March 5, 2008
Tim Redmond Responds to SF Bay Guardian's Lawsuit Victory
After a local jury found SF Weekly guilty of illegal predatory pricing and awarded the local alt weekly a cool $6.39 million (the verdict subject to "treble damages," which bring the total award to $15.6 million), SFBG Executive Editor Tim Redmond tells the harrowing tale of the five-week trial in his own words:
But the verdict sends a clear signal to small businesses, independent newspapers and the alternative press that a locally owned publication has the right to a level playing field and that a chain can’t intentionally cut prices and sell below cost to injure a smaller competitor.The trial had been underway for more than five weeks. The Guardian charged the Weekly with violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act, a Progressive-era law that bars a company from selling a product below cost for the purpose of destroying competition.
Evidence produced in the trial showed clearly that the Weekly had been selling ads below cost. In fact, the paper had lost money every year since the New Times chain, now known as Village Voice Media, bought it in 1995.
But wait. It gets better! Redmond goes on to say "Lacey [VVM Editor In Chief] could be heard mumbling 'shit' over and over again." Ouch. Anyway, an appeal is more than certain, a process that "can take years."
Years? Ack. Let's hope that print publishing is still around by then.
In the end, though, this litigiousness all boils down to two important thing: where is the an open-bar celebratory party and is SFist invited?
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Can't say for certain, but I forecast an open tab at Thee Parkside tonight.
With all the proverbial dick measuring the two parties were doing while the trial was going on, I'm surprised the BG isn't pimping their win a little harder.
in an ideal world they'd use some of that money to hire more competent reporters and do more, um, reporting of news, but I ain't holdin' my breath.
Having worked in publishing long enough, I can tell you that nothing that SF Weekly did is not what anyone in publishing does. Including the SFBG (which is widely known for strong arming their advertisers, I'm surprised that SFWeekly did subpoena any ex-SFBG employees). Anyway, if this stands, it will perhaps set a precedent and considering how rough things are for publishing, and publishers looking for anyone to blame but themselves, I expect we'll see more of these lawsuits. Or perhaps not, no other publication sees the world in quite the paranoid way that the SFBG does. I guess we are lucky about that.
Now remind us again, what is this "print publishing" thing?
SF Weekly was not selling ads for less than the market would bear. Rather, the Guardian argued its competitor "sold below cost" because expenses outweighed income. Key to SF Weekly's cost structure is the fact it employs more than twice as many full-time reporters as the Guardian, and pays more than twice what Guardian reporters earn. As a result of this investment, SFW stories have provoked California Assembly hearings on defrauding the elderly, exposed abuses by local labor bosses, exposed the Navy's Hunters Point nuclear activities, exposed the SF Giants' illegal toxic dumping, uncovered and halted an illegal SFO plot to siphon public funds to Honduras, and so on. Lacking space, I name a mere fraction of SFW stories that have elevated San Francisco public life. The Guardian seeks an injunction to slash this investment in journalists and journalism. This is Brugmann/Redmond's idea of social justice? For whom?