Newspapers Tighten Sports Belt

The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram will begin sharing some of their sports coverage with each other, the newspapers said Monday, in the latest example of increased collaboration between the one-time rivals.

Beginning Feb. 1, The News will provide its beat coverage of the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars to the Star-Telegram.

In exchange, the Star-Telegram will share its Texas Rangers coverage with The News. The two will continue to cover the Dallas Cowboys separately.

The deal will allow the two largest North Texas newspapers to cut costs at a time of unprecedented business challenges. The troubled newspaper industry faces falling revenue, rising costs and the mass migration of readers and advertisers to online information sources.

“This arrangement allows both papers to reduce expenses, eliminate duplicative stories and still maintain high quality exclusive coverage our readers have come to expect,” said Robert W. Mong Jr., editor of The News, in a memo to staffers.

The two papers will also share coverage of some college teams and a few other sporting events, he said.

The papers do not plan to share each others’ sports columnists, and columnists at both papers are expected to continue commenting on all local sports teams.

In addition, The News plans to supplement its Rangers coverage as it sees fit, and the Star-Telegram is expected to do the same with the Mavs and the Stars, Mong said.

“As I’ve said before, this only works because both papers have nationally recognized sports sections,” he told staffers.

Starting last fall, The News and the Star-Telegram launched a joint distribution agreement in which the Dallas paper delivers copies of its Fort Worth counterpart in Dallas, Cooke, Denton and Ellis Counties.

In return, the Star-Telegram distributes The News in Tarrant, Parker, Hood and Johnson Counties.

The two papers also began sharing some arts coverage and photographs late last year.