Is It a Newspaper?

The question of what is a newspaper remains unanswered in the law, though to us the answer is pretty clear. This issue comes up now in the case of the San Diego Reader, an alternative weekly full of arts and politics and entertainment ads. It looks like the Los Angeles Reader, but the two papers are not affiliated.

The law of defamation in California aims to encourage the publication of corrections. If a newspaper publishes a prompt correction, the damages that it may be held liable for are strictly limited. If a newspaper publishes a correction in timely fashion, then the aggrieved plaintiff may not recover more than his actual economic losses, which in defamation cases tend to be hard to prove. No punitive damages, no pain and suffering.

The law, enacted in 1931, originally covered only newspapers but was amended in 1945 to include radio. By court decision, it now includes television as well. But it does not cover magazines, and it does not mention weekly newspapers.

In Carol Burnett’s case against the National Enquirer a few years ago, the Enquirer was held to be a magazine and not a newspaper, as defined by the California law. That’s how Burnett was able to win a large judgment against the Enquirer. The court reasoned that the law was meant to give extra protection to publications that work under deadline pressure, and it found that the Enquirer’s deadlines of two to three weeks gave it the time to get things right.

How about the Reader? In 1982 it published an article about an investigation by the district attorney into alleged illegal activity by lawyers. Several lawyers were prominently mentioned in the story. One in particular asked for a correction, which was promptly published, though he was not satisfied. Should he now be limited to recovering actual damages? Is the Reader a newspaper?

Its editors say that they frequently work on 24-hour deadlines in covering breaking news. The article in question may have had a longer lead time, but being a newspaper is an attribute of the publication, not of each article in it.

Besides, it’s not clear that deadline pressure is the right standard. The law was intended to encourage the discussion of public issues, which is what the San Diego Reader was doing. Its activity is what the law was meant to protect.

If a publication looks like a newspaper and feels like a newspaper and reads like a newspaper, it’s a newspaper.