Two Newsrooms, One Press — the Joint Operating Agreement

In 1950 Fort Wayne's rival dailies did something almost no American papers had done: they merged everything except the news. The arrangement Helene Foellinger formed with the Journal Gazette was one of the first joint operating agreements for competing daily newspapers in the United States — so early that it required a special act of Congress, twenty years before the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 codified JOAs generally. Under it, the Journal Gazette and the News-Sentinel kept independent editorial staffs and management, while a jointly owned corporation, Fort Wayne Newspapers, Inc., sold the advertising, handled circulation, and printed both papers. On the strength of the News-Sentinel's larger circulation the Foellinger side took a 55 percent share of Fort Wayne Newspapers, and Helene Foellinger served as its president. Ground was broken July 26, 1956, at 600 West Main Street, and from 1958 both newsrooms worked under that one roof, above one pressroom — competitors sharing a landlord, a press, and a delivery fleet, and nothing else.

The agreement outlived its makers and was remade at each ownership change. In 1980 Helene Foellinger, seventy and without a family successor, sold the News Publishing Company and its 55 percent of Fort Wayne Newspapers to Knight Ridder for nearly $70 million, and the JOA was extended through 2020. In 2003 the agreement was renegotiated again: Knight Ridder raised its stake in Fort Wayne Newspapers from 55 to 75 percent at a cost of $42 million, protections for the Journal Gazette's minority owners were added, and the partners agreed to build a new downtown press facility, completed on the block west of 600 Main in 2007. When Knight Ridder was bought by McClatchy in 2006, the News-Sentinel passed in turn to Ogden Newspapers of Wheeling, West Virginia — leaving Fort Wayne Newspapers a partnership between Ogden's News Publishing Company and the Journal Gazette Company, as it remains. Press accounts of the News-Sentinel's 2017 print shutdown give the JOA's term as running through 2075. The arrangement's consequence for readers was the thing Foellinger designed it for: Fort Wayne, a mid-sized city, kept two editorial voices — two endorsements, two editorial pages, two news judgments — for seventy years after most American cities its size had fallen to one.

Sources: The Journal Gazette and News-Sentinel reference histories (JOA of 1950; 1980 Knight Ridder purchase and extension; 2003 renegotiation, $42 million stake increase, press facility); Foellinger Foundation, "Pressing On" (the 55 percent share; Helene Foellinger's presidency); Fort Wayne Magazine, "Starting the presses" (1956 groundbreaking; 1958 move to 600 W. Main; 2007 press facility); Adweek and America's Newspapers, August 2017 and May 2020 (JOA term through 2075); Dirks, Van Essen & April market report, October 2022 (the Fort Wayne Newspapers partnership as business agent).