Charles Fitzgerald takes a break from his usual fare to unravel some of the newspaper drama in the U.S. and specifically in seattle. It’s a good read. In addition to hashing through some of the numbers, he makes an amusing point re: transparency, noting (bold mine):
Despite this cushy arrangement, the two have been at odds, spending five years battling over the terms of the JOA. Both papers have gone to great lengths to keep the terms of the JOA secret (transparency is kind of like anytime, anywhere communications -- it is great other people are always reachable, but we're not so sure we want it ourselves...). The area of greatest competition between the two papers in recent years has been around who claimed to be losing the most money, which was at least in part jockeying for negotiating leverage. Amidst these negotiations, the Times, historically the afternoon paper while the P-I was the morning paper, moved to the morning in what could only be characterized as a go-for-the-jugular move.
Ah yes, the lens of transparency does work both ways, and the journalism field has traditionally been loath to have that happen.