TUCSON PAPER TO GO ON AS WEB SITE.

A federal judge refused to grant the Arizona state attorney general a temporary restraining order that would have kept the Tucson Citizen publishing on Tuesday, saying that the state had failed to show that the paper's owner, Gannett Co. Inc., or its partner Lee Enterprises Inc. -- publisher of the Arizona Daily Star -- had violated antitrust laws.

Nonetheless, Gannett will continue to operate TucsonCitizen.com. The site's editor, Mark Evans, wrote to its readers on Wednesday that they should expect a redesigned site that will be "a collection of blogs and bloggers who post news, information, opinion and more on the site every day."

He said that the operating model would be HuffingtonPost.com. "Don't jump to conclusions about political bent, it's the way the Huffpo site operates, not what's on it that I'm talking about," wrote Evans.

Evans said that the site would have three paid staffers.

Gannett said on May 15 that the paper's last print edition would be the next day, Saturday, and the attorney general scrambled to get together enough evidence to keep the paper publishing. The company said in January that it would sell or shut down the paper, which was in a joint operating agreement with the Daily Star, by mid-March. The company was in negotiations at the scheduled shut-down date with a potential buyer and so extended the paper's life on a day-to-day basis for what turned out to be almost two months.

In court papers, Gannett said it valued the Citizen's assets at $760,000; a potential suitor offered the company $400,000.

Although Gannett and Lee ended the JOA, the two remain partners in Tucson. The Daily Star will print an editorial provided by Gannett every week.

A decade ago there were 14 joint operating agreements around the country; in the ensuing 10 years, one new one opened (and closed -- Denver) and eight (now including Tucson) have ended. Are the days numbered for the remainders (Charleston, W.Va., Fort Wayne, Ind., Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and York, Pa.)? I'm really only comfortable with Vegas (because of the unique deal cut two years ago, where the Sun appears as a daily section within the Review-Journal) and Salt Lake (where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, own the Deseret News and are willing to run it at break-even or even a loss).

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