Rough Trade

Disner added that the two companies might well have escaped the attention of regulators if they‘d achieved the same ends by other means.

Schneiderman has heard the same thing from his new attorneys -- he’s no longer using the firm that signed off on the New Times deal. “Our new antitrust attorneys said the transactions in Cleveland and Los Angeles would have been fine if there had been a gap of some sort between them -- if these deals had happened, like three months apart, so there was no appearance of dividing the markets. But the result would have been the same.”

Disner, the antitrust expert, noted that “Settlements always have something for both sides. Superficially, the consent decree is a complete capitulation. But maybe it‘s not enough to get a new paper running.”

Joe Donnelly and Christine Pelisek contributed to this story.