The Dominion Post

Abstract

[This case is restricted. Please contact the Business Case Centre for more details]. On the morning of July 8th, 2002, the first issue of the The Dominion Post hit the streets of Wellington. The city’s residents bought the paper in record numbers, all eager to see what had been announced not simply as the amalgamation of two of the city’s institutions—The Evening Post and The Dominion—but as a new paper. Later that winter’s day, the city’s commuters travelled home without an evening paper for the first time in 137 years. For many years, the two papers had been operated by Independent Newspapers Limited (INL), majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire. INL owned 70 newspapers in New Zealand. And though both papers in Wellington were profitable, it had become financially apparent in recent years that the evening newspaper was living on borrowed time—and very dependent on sharing an advertising rates structure with The Dominion. The Evening Post was the last remaining evening paper in metropolitan Australasia, and its trends in circulation and advertising were troubling