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The article discusses the decision by the McClatchy company to sell Minneapolis' "Star Tribune" newspaper just a few months after acquiring the esteemed daily from Knight Ridder. Chief executive officer Gary Pruitt said that the decision was strictly from a financial standpoint, as it directly contributed to McClatchy's lowered cash flow in 2006. The author decries the implications of the sale and its illustration of the newspaper industry's increasingly commodified role in the United States, often at the expense of quality journalism.

York, Pennsylvania has always been an offbeat kind of newspaper town, so perhaps it is fitting that, in an unusual deal, the owners of York's two dailies recently merged properties. There are strategic reasons for this transaction. The two newspapers that serve the region, which are now in a joint operating agreement (JOA), are the "Daily Record," a morning paper with 46,500 weekday circulation, and the "York Dispatch," with 37,300 weekday and 93,200 Sunday circulation. Another unusual fact about York is that for a long time it was perhaps the only U.S. city to have an independently owned Sunday newspaper, the "York Sunday News." York had three newspaper ownerships, the two weekday dailies and an independent Sunday. When the two newspapers entered into the JOA, MediaNews received an option to buy the "Daily Record," which became the basis for the recent transaction. In effect, the option was insurance against the time when the afternoon syndrome might begin to erode the Dispatch's circulation. Indeed, over the last five years the Dispatch's circulation has declined more than 7 percent while the Record's has gained nearly 7 percent. Thus, the transaction brought MediaNews what it probably wanted all along, control of a seven-day morning newspaper.