There's a Newspaper War Going On in Las Vegas

The Las Vegas Review-Journal announced Friday that it will no longer print its rival the Las Vegas Sun for the first time in decades, amid an ongoing legal dispute over the nation's last joint operating agreement stemming from a 1970 law designed to preserve newspapers. Readers "will not find a printed Las Vegas Sun insert inside," the Review-Journal said in an editorial, noting the Sun maintains a website, has a few hundred thousand followers across social media platforms, and is free to produce its own newspaper. "We encourage them to do so. The Review-Journal competes with countless sources of news and entertainment, but we would welcome one more. We just don't want to foot the bill. It is time the Sun stood up on its own two feet," the editorial said, without specifying the cost.

The two publications will be in court Friday and the Sun hopes a judge will order printing to immediately resume, attorney Leif Reid said in an email. It will be the first day in 76 years that the Sun hasn't been printed, he said, per the AP. "This does irreparable harm to our community, as no one benefits when a local newspaper is prevented from being published," he said. The now-rare joint operating agreement required the Sun to be printed as a daily insert in the Review-Journal, while both companies remained editorially independent with separate newsrooms and websites. A lower court had found the agreement was unenforceable because a 2005 update was never signed by the US attorney general, and in February the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the Sun.

The Review-Journal editorial called the Supreme Court decision a decisive victory, saying that halting publication of the Sun on Friday was "a result of 6½ years of litigation between the newspapers, precipitated by the Sun." Such agreements between rival publications have dwindled as part of a "long, slow goodbye of newspapers as we knew them," said Ken Doctor, a news business analyst. The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News ended a 40-year agreement last year. USA Today Co., which owns the Detroit Free Press, recently announced its plans to purchase the Detroit News.

The Review-Journal is owned by the Adelson family, casino magnates and mega GOP donors, and remains the state's largest newspaper. The Review-Journal's editorials lean more conservative, while the Sun's lean liberal. Genelle Belmas, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas, said it would be disappointing if the last joint operating agreement in the country ends. "Every local news outlet we lose—and that includes big towns, small towns, whatever—is a loss of perspective and a loss of a potential alternative view," Belmas said.