Squashed

Here’s what the jury determined actually happened.  A giant media conglomerate owns a bunch of newspapers.  One of those competes with an independent newspaper.  The media conglomerate decides it wants the independent newspaper to go away.  (So far so good.  Capitalism encourages competition.)  Then the media conglomerate does something illegal.  It cuts the ad costs its competing newspaper to below the cost of producing the newspaper.  It uses profits from the other papers to keep the paper losing money afloat.  As soon as the little paper went under, it would have jacked the ad cost up higher than it had ever been because there was no longer any competition in the market.  This is illegal.

jakoblodwick wrote, amongst other things, “In reality, the playing field was level, but is no longer level. It was level when both papers were entitled to own their own property and were free from coercion. When unethical businessmen use the government to stifle competition, everyone else suffers. This is true regardless of the size of the business. It’s wrong when Halliburton does it and it’s wrong when a quirky alt-weekly does it.”

The big SF weekly was the one trying to stifle competition here.  It was trying to get a monopoly by destroying the newspaper advertisement market and bankrupting its competition.  It wanted to ensure that it was impossible to run a profitable small newspaper in San Fransisco so that it could later jack up the costs and screw consumers who didn’t have any alternatives.