After losing court battle, RDU introduces newspaper racks

After losing a six-year First Amendment fight and paying more than $900,000 in legal bills, Raleigh-Durham International Airport this month introduced a new, old-fashioned customer amenity to the passenger concourse: coin-operated newspaper vending boxes.

Travelers now can buy USA Today, The New York Times and The News & Observer from news racks in four locations near airline gates on the Terminal 2 concourse, and in five other spots around the airport. The Herald-Sun of Durham is expected to go on sale there, too, in coming days.

The newspapers sued the RDU Authority in 2004 after airport officials said they would allow travelers to buy papers only in airport shops, which sometimes were closed when early flights departed or late ones arrived. U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle ruled in 2008 that the news rack ban violated the newspapers' First Amendment right to disseminate the news.

RDU was unsuccessful in its appeal of Boyle's ruling and of his order that the publicly owned airport reimburse the newspapers for their legal bills. The airport authority dropped its appeal last year and repaid the newspapers' $450,000 legal costs, after paying its own lawyers $503,000.

Airport officials had argued that news racks would cause economic harm to RDU gift shops, clash with airport aesthetics, block pedestrian traffic flow and pose security risks.

But Jim Tatum, general counsel for the airport authority, said RDU officials and newspaper publishers agreed on terms that will work out well for everybody.

"The newspapers will still be distributed through all the newsstands and gift shops as well as news racks, and I think the combination works out fine," Tatum said in an interview. "Most of the airports we surveyed that had news racks found that the combination of the two didn't seem to cause problems for the vendors and they provided some additional convenience for the customers," he said.

The news racks are clustered in brushed-steel bins that blend with their surroundings. The publishers will pay RDU a monthly rent of $12.50 for each box.

The start of business was delayed this fall while newspaper employees applied for security clearance that would allow them to service the boxes at the airport.

Jim Puryear, N&O vice president for circulation, said The N&O has been selling papers in nine news racks at the airport since Nov. 16.

Brent Agurs, circulation director for The Herald-Sun, said he hopes to have papers in six RDU news racks by the end of the month.