NEWS ANALYSIS : Tribune’s Demise Could Change the Face of Local News Coverage

Among mediaphiles, the San Diego Tribune has always been viewed as something of an oddity, a rogue sister to the larger and better-known San Diego Union.

Billing itself as “San Diego’s Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper,” an apparent slap at the Union, which has never won the prize, it always seemed to relish its independence, even as it continued to lose readers.

On Wednesday, the Union-Tribune Publishing Co. announced that the Tribune has lost its fight for independence and will merge with the Union in early 1992. The loss could have a dramatic effect on the depth and variety of news coverage in San Diego.

“There is no question you lose some original news, some of which is valuable to the community,” said Ben Bagdikian, professor emeritus of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the author of the book “Media Monopoly.”

Even though they share advertising and circulation departments, and the Tribune and Union newsrooms are only a few yards from each other in the paper’s Mission Valley headquarters, the competition between the editorial departments of the two papers is often fierce.

Each paper always sends its own reporters to even the most minor of news events, refusing to duplicate coverage and adding considerable expense to the business of harvesting news.

Even though both papers use the same staff of photographers, they often will make separate photo assignments for the same story. Only reluctantly do both papers use the same photos.

A free-lancer trying to win a Tribune assignment once pointed out to a Trib editor that he did free-lance work on similar subjects for other local publications. “That’s fine,” the editor said, “as long as you don’t work for the Union.”

Publisher Helen Copley acknowledged the difference between the two papers in a recent deposition taken as part of a sexual discrimination suit against the paper, which was quoted in the Sept. 5 edition of the San Diego Reader.

“They’re two different newspapers,” she said. “And the editorial page of the San Diego Union is a Republican reflection, which I am. The Tribune is an independent.”

Although that may be an oversimplification, there is no doubt that the papers’ approaches to stories often differ dramatically. At times it might be nothing more than different reporters taking different angles. But, at other times, there is clearly a desire by Tribune editors to offer readers something they are not getting in the Union.

“There are differences in the editorial pages, but there are also differences in coverage,” said Michael Shames, executive director of Utility Consumers Action Network, a San Diego-based consumer group. “There were a number of times in (SDG&E;’s merger attempt with Southern California Edison) that the Union, for whatever reason, failed to cover certain stories.

“Maybe it was a shortage of staff or an editorial bias, but frequently the Tribune came out with stories that the Union didn’t catch. And it’s critical for the public to know these things.”

With the Union and Tribune staffs operating as one, it is unlikely that the often feisty, aggressive attitude of the Tribune will survive. Competition bred that attitude, and the sibling rivalry will no longer exist.

U-T management may label the move a merger, but it’s more accurate to call it the death of the Tribune. At best, everything it stood for will be absorbed into the Union.

The tragedy of the loss will undoubtedly affect the survivors.

After the afternoon Cleveland Press folded in 1982, Bill Woestendiek, who was executive editor of the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer, noticed a slight malaise infecting some of his staff.

“Subconsciously, there was a feeling, ‘It’s not coming out this afternoon, we can get to it tomorrow,’ and that was troublesome,” said Woestendiek, now director of the USC School of Journalism. “The daily nitty-gritty stuff goes on . . . but the mechanics of city government, in that area I felt we lost some of the competitive spirit when we lost the afternoon” paper.

The U-T says it will offer an afternoon edition of the new Union-Tribune, but it will simply be a later version of the morning paper. Experiences in other cities have shown that readers don’t buy it. They simply stop reading the paper in the afternoon.

That’s what happened in Ft. Lauderdale a few years ago after the morning Sun-Sentinel merged its news staff with its sister afternoon paper, the Ft. Lauderdale News, according to Richard Clark, president of the Ft. Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.

“Now the public is using print media in the morning and electronic media at night,” Clark said.

For mediaphiles, it’s hard to view that as a good thing.