Detroit, Jan 8, 2026, 07:17 EST
- Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News are operating independently after the end of their joint operating agreement.
- The change ends the last such cost-sharing deal between major U.S. dailies, and puts both papers back in direct competition.
- Editors are reshaping print and digital products as advertising and subscriptions keep shifting.
Detroit’s two daily newspapers are back on their own after the country’s last joint operating agreement between major papers expired, reopening a head-to-head rivalry that had been walled off on the business side for decades.
The split matters because it forces both publishers to carry their own costs again — printing, sales, distribution — at a moment when local news budgets are tight and readers are trained to graze online. It also makes Detroit a live test of whether two metro dailies can stay standing without shared scaffolding.
A joint operating agreement, or JOA, is a legal structure that lets competing newspapers share business operations while keeping separate newsrooms and editorial voices, under rules created by the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act. “The technology would have happened anyway, with or without the JOA,” said University of Michigan-Dearborn communications professor Tim Kiska; “it worked in that we still have two newspapers,” he said.
The Detroit deal, approved in 1989 after legal fights and launched in 1990, bundled advertising, printing and distribution while leaving reporting separate, Model D reported. “There are two newspapers to this day in metropolitan Detroit,” said former Detroit News publisher Mark Silverman, and Detroit News editor and publisher Gary Miles said “we’re returning to war footing.” 1
The reshuffle is already changing products. “The Homestyle section and the News’ opinion section will no longer be available,” Detroit Free Press editor and vice president Nicole Avery Nichols wrote, adding that “Free Press subscribers will enjoy an enhanced Sunday news product.” 2
But the downside scenario is familiar across U.S. local news: revenues fail to keep up, one newsroom shrinks faster, and the “two-paper town” becomes a one-paper town in practice. A Northwestern Medill study said the number of “news desert” counties rose to 213 in 2025 and about 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news. 3
