BRIEFS.

*Arizona lawman drops Tucson suit: The attorney general's office in Arizona said last Wednesday that it was withdrawing its antitrust lawsuit against Gannett Co. Inc. and Lee Enterprises Inc. regarding Gannett's ending of the print edition of its Tucson Citizen. Earlier in the month, a federal judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order that would have forced the two publishing companies, which together owned a joint operating agreement in Tucson -- where Davenport, Iowa-based Lee continues to publish the Arizona Daily Star -- to continue to print the Citizen, which ended on May 16. "At this point, it was highly unlikely that any outcome of the litigation could lead to the reopening of the Tucson Citizen, elimination of anti-competitive activity or a re-establishment of competitive voices in the Tucson newspaper market," Anne Hilby, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Terry Goddard, told The Associated Press. Gannett, of McLean, Va., is continuing to operate the paper's web site, TucsonCitizen.com, as a local news site with content provided by unpaid bloggers and a staff of three.

*Catalyst cuts staff jobs: Western Canada newsprint maker Catalyst Paper Corp. said on Tuesday that it was cutting about 100 staff jobs, with 45 "permanent reductions" at offices in suburban Vancouver and Nanaimo and 55 salaried staff indefinitely laid off at its Elk Fallas and Crofton mills. The layoffs are to take effect next Monday and the company says it will save $C350,000 ($US321,000) per month as well as $C4 million ($US3.7 million) in annualized savings. Catalyst said it expects the one-time costs of the layoffs to not exceed $C5 million ($US4.6 million). "The unprecedented layoffs within the salaried workforce reflect the severity of recent demand declines and the likelihood that curtailed production will not restart in the short term," the company said in a statement.

*Paper, radio station cut preps deal: The Orange County Register and KLAA-AM of Anaheim, Calif., said earlier last month that they had cut a multimedia sponsorship agreement regarding local high school sports coverage. The sports-oriented radio station has created a Friday morning, drive-time segment on prep sports, which is sponsored by the newspaper and its high school sports web site, OCVarsity.com, The new segment includes interviews with the paper's preps writer, Steve Fryer, as well as high school athletes. The radio station will not only promote the segment and the OCVarsity.com site on its radio programming, but will also publish banner ads for the newspaper's sites and the segment on its web site and the paper will reciprocate.

*Valassis, Dallas paper in insert alliance: The Dallas Morning News and the Valassis direct marketing firm said last week they had struck a deal to combine efforts to distribute inserts in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. The two will have a single, shared offering under the RedPlum Direct Mail Package label that will reach 1-1/2 million households each week. Beginning in August, the newspaper will deliver the RedPlum package to 485,000 home delivery customers, while Valassis will use the U.S. Mail to deliver to the other 1 million households in the market. "By merging the News' portfolio of print products with Valassis' unique targeting systems, this partnership allows us to offer advertisers throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth marketplace enhanced distribution capabilities," said John McKeon, President and General Manager of the Morning News. Valassis, based in Livonia, Mich., has similar deals with 31 other newspapers across the country.

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