Gannett, Hearst, NY Times, Trib Media have hooked up to win back ad dollars migrating to social web in a recessionary economy. The lo-fi rollout of QuadrantOne hit the ground upselling "premium ad space" just weeks after the fall of the Times Tower pay wall.  Can a classic four company oligopoly use ad sales to subsidize being forced by non-vertical web culture to give away content online? 

Back in 1970, when DARPA was implementing the data packet switching technology that would grow into the internet Richard Nixon signed the Newpaper Preservation Act. With its "joint operating ageements" the Nixon-era law exempted newspapers from antirust laws in the face of declining circulation.  Yet here we are four decades later and its tough to fathom that the Sulzbergers, the Chandlers and the Hearsts didn't have enough bright people around them not to see the handwriting on the wall.

QuadrantOne, enter stage right.  Delivering the "premium" ad space to high dollar customers means talking sideways to partners, establishing "price leadership" and making agreements. If those agrements are written, the new one source supplier (and warehouser) of web ad space for old school, vertical selling national brands, could be seen by some interests as an internet ad sales cartel. If lawyers get their meters running, this case would play out in the US.  It the companies were at home in Germany, the Bundeskartellamt would want to look into the matter.  But the social web plays out on a global stage where even powerful governmets have very little influence over cartels like an OPEC or FIFA, the interational football federation.  What's problematic in this case is that Quadrant One is ramping up during the lame duck period of the laissez-faire Bush administration.