Las Vegas Sun sues to block R-J effort to end joint operating deal

The Las Vegas Sun filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to block the Las Vegas Review-Journal from seeking to end a 30-year joint operating agreement between the two news organizations.

The lawsuit alleges the termination of the JOA “will eliminate the Sun newspaper by leaving it with no infrastructure within in which to produce, print and distribute its newspaper.”

The Sun seeks a court order declaring that the Review-Journal has “unlawfully” tried to monopolize the daily newspaper business in Las Vegas.

“The Sun’s lawsuit is baseless and we are confident the court will agree,” said Ben Lipman, the Review-Journal’s vice president of legal affairs and general counsel. “This new complaint is little more than a rehash of previous complaints the Sun has made about the Review-Journal’s request to have a judge and jury decide if the Sun has breached the agreement between the newspapers.”

Last month, the Review-Journal filed court papers in Clark County District Court asking to break up the joint operating agreement.

The Sun has breached its responsibilities, failing to abide by the requirement to “preserve high standards of newspaper quality,” and the business arrangement has become obsolete amid the dramatic changing face of journalism, the court papers allege. The filing also alleges that the Sun withholds local news content in favor of wire service stories and uses its print edition to drive readers away from the companies’ joint print product and to the Sun’s website instead.

Each news organization’s website operates outside the joint operating agreement.

The Sun has denied the Review-Journal’s allegations in state court.

And in its federal suit, the Sun called the Review-Journal’s claims “not only bogus but also objectively baseless, unreasonable and impermissible grounds” to seek termination of the JOA.

Sun CEO, Publisher and Editor Brian Greenspun and James Pisanelli, one of the newspaper’s lawyers for the suit, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

The JOA was first struck in 1989 under the U.S. Newspaper Preservation Act to keep the failing Sun afloat and preserve its presence in Southern Nevada. The two newspapers merged their business operations but remained independent editorially.

For the first 16 years, the Review-Journal printed the Sun as an afternoon newspaper. Then, in a revised joint operating agreement in 2005, the Sun agreed to be distributed as a section in the morning Review-Journal. The agreement expires in 2040.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564. Follow @JGermanRJ on Twitter.