After being pummeled into a standing eight count in the first round of its legal slugfest with the owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times Company has sought outside help. The company has hired a politically connected public affairs firm to press its case that the Seattle Times is the victim, rather than the instigator, of the dispute.
More than a week ago, the Times contracted the services of Pacific Public Affairs (PPA), a local firm that has done high-end consulting work for clients in the timber and health-care industries. It may also retain the services of Copacino + Fujikado, the Seattle advertising boutique that creates television ads for the Seattle Mariners.
Times Company spokesperson Kerry Coughlin confirmed the hiring of PPA, saying it was done through Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, the law firm representing the Times in its courtroom wrangling with the Hearst Corporation, the P-I‘s owner. Coughlin declined to go into specifics, other than to say PPA “would work with Davis, Wright on some of the public affairs strategy issues around the JOA [joint operating agreement].” As for Copacino, Coughlin said, “We don’t have an ad campaign planned per se,” but Times executives were “talking about it.”
Outside the courtroom, the Times is facing, and apparently losing, a public relations battle over its effort to end the 20-year-old JOA between the papers–whereby they compete editorially while sharing business functions–a move that if successful would likely lead to the closure of the P-I.
Much of the public seems to believe the Times intends to do away with the P-I in order to consolidate its control of the Seattle market. On a call-in show about the JOA on public television station KCTS on September 25, most callers appeared to support that stance.
Coughlin attributed such beliefs to “off-the-mark” media characterizations. “When people see a bigger picture they begin to understand what’s going on, and their thinking does a 360,” Coughlin said.
Any Times campaign would likely stress the arguments laid out in an open letter to readers from the Blethen family that ran in the October 8 Times. The Blethens, who own a controlling stake in the paper, asserted that economic changes necessitated the closure of one paper. They are not trying to shut down the P-I, the Blethens said, but are fighting to preserve their “local, independent newspaper” against a legal assault by a “multi-billion dollar New York-based media conglomerate.” The letter stated, “Local newspaper stewardship and independent journalism are at risk.”
P-I staffers have long dismissed that claim as disingenuous, pointing to the fact that the Times Company owns multiple newspapers in two states, and that 49.5 percent of the company is owned by Knight Ridder, one of the country’s largest newspaper chains.
Hearst spokesperson Paul Luthringer said that the Times‘ hiring of outside public affairs consultants was its prerogative. “We do not employ such a firm, and the reason we don’t is because we’ve always believed we’re on the right side of this dispute,” he said.
Phil Talmadge, co-chair of the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town (C2NT), a union-backed citizens’ group formed earlier this year to advocate for the continued publication of both dailies, said that the Times had every right to burnish its image, but expressed concern that there could be a political dimension to the move given C2NT’s effort to have regulators intervene to halt the Times‘ push to end the JOA.
Jim Kneeland, an owner of PPA, was press secretary for former governor Booth Gardner and remains close to current Attorney General Christine Gregoire. Her office has been asked to intervene by C2NT.
Talmadge said Kneeland’s firm was one of a half dozen in the area “with significant political connections” that engaged in “something that looks like lobbying in some instances.” (Talmadge and Gregoire are both running for governor in 2004.)
Kneeland said it was his policy not to talk about clients, but bristled in response to questions about his relationship with Gregoire, saying he knows Talmadge better than he knows the attorney general. “I’ve had lunch with him since I’ve had lunch with Chris,” he said.
After the Times indicated in April it would move to end the JOA, Hearst preemptively sued, winning a September 25 court ruling that at least temporarily stayed the Times‘ hand. King County Superior Court Judge Greg Canova upheld Hearst’s contention that the Times could not use strike-driven losses in 2000 for the purposes of ending the agreement. The Times has appealed Canova’s decision.
