Meese OKs Detroit Paper Merger

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III today approved a proposed merger that will allow rival newspapers in Detroit to combine business operations and avert a threatened shutdown of the Detroit Free Press.

In a victory for Knight-Ridder Inc., owner of the Free Press, Meese overruled an administrative law judge’s recommendation in December that the proposed joint operating agreement between the Free Press and the Detroit News represented an impermissible exemption to antitrust laws.