JUSTICE SEES NO MONOPOLY IN SEATTLE.

Late Friday afternoon the anti-trust division of the U.S. Justice Department said that it had closed an investigation into the 22-year-old agreement between the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, saying that it had found no evidence of any wrongdoing.

The division said in a that it "did not find sufficient basis" to say that the Times had do anything wrong in recent years to endanger the Post-Intelligencer's long-term survival.

But the justice department also said it would re-open the investigation should one of the papers close.

The two papers have been locked in a legal war for two years, with the Times saying that it has the right to end the joint operating agreement between the two because it lost money for three consecutive years, 2000-2002.

The P-I, owned by The Hearst Corp., has argued that the Times overspent on its editorial product during that time in an attempt to create enough losses to shut down the JOA.

Kerry Coughlin, the spokeswoman for the Seattle Times, told Reuters that the fact that the Justice Department had dropped its investigation, "validates what we knew, which is that we did not engage in any anti-competitive conduct."

In a statement, Hearst said, "Our goal is to continue JOA-publication of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and to prevent the Seattle Times Co. from turning Seattle into a one-newspaper town."

An early ruling in the suit and counter-suit regarding the shutdown of the JOA is being appealed to the Washington State Supreme Court.

Interesting that Justice decided that a late Friday release of this information was necessary. It would suggest there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm about dropping the investigation (but, I've been wrong before).