The
Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 was an Act of the
United States Congress, signed by President
Richard Nixon, authorizing the formation of
joint operating agreements among competing newspaper operations within the same market area. It exempted newspapers from certain provisions of
antitrust laws. Its drafters argued that this would allow the survival of multiple daily newspapers in a given urban market where circulation was declining. This exemption stemmed from the observation that the alternative is usually for at least one of the newspapers, generally the one published in the evening, to cease operations altogether.