Times, WashPost go their own ways

"One of the oldest corporate marriages in the newspaper business ended in divorce Wednesday," Howard Kurtz reports in the Washington Post. He means the joint wire service of the Post and the Los Angeles Times. They are ditching each other, and while Kurtz says neither side is pointing fingers, at least some at the LAT feel the Post wanted to go its own way. Kurtz:

Executives at the Times and Post were tight-lipped about the split, but it clearly had its roots in Tribune Co.'s 2000 takeover of the Los Angeles paper's parent company. That takeover included the Baltimore Sun, Newsday and the Hartford Courant, whose articles were also offered by the news service.

But Tribune, now owned by Chicago businessman Sam Zell, is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And a separate news alliance, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, has emerged as a competitor to the Times-Post venture.

During the same period, cutbacks at the Times, whose Washington bureau was merged with those of other Tribune papers, reduced its contributions on national and international news. The Post, while also shrinking through four rounds of early-retirement buyouts, has largely maintained its national focus. The Post could market itself as a standalone news service or seek another partner. Bizjournals.com has estimated the Times-Post service's annual revenue at $1.4 million.

The news service, launched in 1962 by the Post's Philip Graham and the LAT's Otis Chandler, gave the then-emerging Times a lot of credibility and access to stories from Washington and overseas. The LAT will now pick up Tribune-McClatchy stories, and put its stories on that wire. Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein's note to the staff is after the jump.