## Facts

- Lorain Journal Company published the *Lorain Journal*, the only daily newspaper in Lorain, Ohio, and the principal channel for reaching local consumers through advertising.
- A new radio station, WEOL, began serving the area and competed for local advertising directed at Lorain audiences.
- After WEOL entered the market, the newspaper adopted and enforced a policy refusing to accept advertising from any business that also advertised with WEOL.
- The newspaper communicated the policy to advertisers and conditioned access to its advertising space on the advertiser’s agreement not to use WEOL.
- Evidence showed many advertisers regarded the newspaper as economically necessary to reach Lorain households, and the policy caused some advertisers to avoid or discontinue radio advertising.
- The United States brought a civil action alleging the policy was exclusionary conduct intended to suppress the competing station and maintain control over local advertising.
- The district court found an attempted monopolization in violation of Sherman Act § 2 and entered an injunction barring the refusal/conditioning practice; the newspaper appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether a dominant newspaper violates Sherman Act § 2 by refusing advertising from businesses that also advertise with a competing radio station, when the practice is designed to exclude the competitor from the local advertising market.
2. Whether the challenged conduct constituted an attempt to monopolize, including specific intent and a dangerous probability of success, within commerce covered by the Sherman Act.
3. Whether the First Amendment shields a newspaper from antitrust liability for an exclusionary advertising policy.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment and injunctive decree against the Lorain Journal Company.
- The Court held the policy was an unlawful attempt to monopolize under Sherman Act § 2.
- The Court concluded the newspaper used its dominant position in local advertising to coerce advertisers not to deal with the competing radio station.
- The Court found sufficient evidence of specific intent to monopolize and a dangerous probability of success given the newspaper’s market position and advertisers’ dependence on it.
- The Court rejected the First Amendment defense because the case concerned anticompetitive commercial conduct in selling advertising, not control of editorial content.
- The injunction properly barred refusing advertisements based on an advertiser’s use of the competing station and barred conditioning acceptance of ads on a promise not to advertise on the station.

## Legal Principles

- Attempted monopolization under Sherman Act § 2 requires (1) specific intent to monopolize and (2) conduct creating a dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power in the relevant market.
- A dominant firm’s conditional dealing or refusal to deal can be exclusionary when used to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with a rival and to foreclose a new entrant.
- Market power and customer dependence may supply both evidence of intent and the dangerous probability that exclusionary conduct will succeed.
- The Sherman Act reaches conduct affecting interstate commerce even when the immediate transactions are local, where the affected advertising and business activity are tied to interstate trade.
- First Amendment protections for the press do not immunize non-editorial commercial practices from antitrust enforcement.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a dominant local newspaper violated Sherman Act § 2 by conditioning access to its advertising on advertisers’ отказ to use a rival radio station, because the coercive refusal-to-deal scheme showed specific intent to suppress competition and posed a dangerous probability of monopolizing the local advertising market; antitrust enforcement of that commercial practice did not violate the First Amendment.


Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, 342 U.S. 143 (1951)