Village Voice Media being acquired by New Times very soon

It's a great song ... maybe doesn;t apply here, but hey, it's a nice plug for Linda Thompson anyway. :-)

indeed.

Besides, methinks Mr. Lomax's entry into this discussion is fairly credible. :-)

BTW, I'm of the opinion the essay is real. It's totally consistent with a longtime NT tradition of responding in print to opponents amd detractors -- most of which are breathtaking and wonderful (Mike Lacey's volleys against Bruce Brugman are awesome). This one, however, is neither.

And other stuff which i'm not going to look up now. I know they let you go and you always talk very interestingly about how shitty they are in some ways, but you also seem to still kind of love them and defend them. That said, I don't want to cast aspersions on you, you seem okay to me! Forget I said anything.

-- O'Connor (oconnorscrib...), July 26th, 2006.

OH CRAP NOW I'M DOING IT

first question: will they let liz spikol keep vlogging????

Another music editor down:

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/07/la_weekly_assigned_new_mu.php

Kate Sullivan was also a great and longtime City Pages writer.

Gah they still owe me $$$

Randy was my editor way back when at pre-New Times Riverfront Times. He was ace. And he's always worth reading, even when he's wrong. Expect hip-hip, electronica and world music to get a smart bump.

Village Voice Media is still highlighting Kate Sullivan's Second Place Southern California Journalism award for Entertainment Reviews/Criticism/Column...

Randall Roberts did a statistical analysis of Dave Marsh's entries in the Rolling Stone Record Guide at the 2006 EMP and something on Creem in 2007

New Times owns the RFT?!

Only for the last 5 years or whatever.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/24/AR2007072402024.html

City Paper Sold to Tampa Alt-Weekly Group
Editor, Publisher to Remain; No Big Changes Planned, New Owner Says

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; Page D04

The Washington City Paper has been sold to group of alternative weeklies based in Tampa.

Creative Loafing Inc., which owns newspapers in Atlanta, Charlotte and Sarasota, Fla., in addition to Tampa, and bills itself as "shelter from the mainstream," bought the City Paper and its sister publication, the Chicago Reader, for an undisclosed amount.

The seller, Chicago Reader Inc., will continue to own stakes in the Amsterdam Weekly in the Netherlands, the Portland (Ore.) Mercury as well as the Stranger, the Seattle weekly that is home to syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage. The company also owns the building in Adams Morgan that houses the City Paper.

The new owners of the City Paper said they do not intend to change the paper's name or make radical alterations to the product. Ben Eason, Creative Loafing's chief executive, said yesterday that he asked City Paper editor Erik Wemple and publisher Amy Austin to remain, and both agreed.

Bob Roth, who co-founded the Chicago Reader in 1971 as an "extracurricular project" when he was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, said Eason contacted him five months ago and eventually made an offer for the two papers. Eason said it is an eight-figure sale and that he tried to buy the stakes in the other papers, too, but Roth would not sell.

City Paper budget cuts already begun will continue, Wemple said, though he said he was not sure where they will come from. "There's no fat in our newsroom that I can identify, and so this is difficult process," Wemple said. "I refuse to pay freelancers less money, and so we'll have to get terribly, terribly creative."

Eason said cuts could come from City Paper's production staff; all Creative Loafing papers are produced and printed in Atlanta to save money.

More than mainstream daily newspapers, alternative weeklies depend on revenue from classifieds, which have been raided by Craigslist. Further, Washington's recent raft of free newspapers -- Express, owned by The Washington Post Co., the Examiner and now the Onion -- all compete for ad dollars that once were nearly exclusive property of the City Paper. It remains profitable, but its margins have shrunk.

"Clearly, alternatives took the first hit on Craigslist," Eason said. "The Chicago Reader was the strongest classifieds publication in the country, and it has taken more of its fair share of hits on that."

With six papers, Creative Loafing will trail Village Voice Media, the nation's largest chain of alt-weeklies, which has 17, including the storied Voice.

In May 2006, Wemple was named editor of the Voice. But he clashed with management, quit the job before he started and stayed at the City Paper. Yesterday, Wemple said he had no regrets for not sticking with the Village Voice job.

tape store RFT is fucking terrible to be honest.
ESPECIALLY when compared to vv/city pages and even miami new times.

x-post

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/index.php/2007/07/24/washington-city-paper-sold-to-atlanta-chain/

Wemple later indicated to editorial staff that the editorial budget is likely to be cut in the coming months to bring City Paper’s editorial expenses in line with other alternative weeklies, but he indicated that similar cuts would likely have come under the old ownership

Wonderful Schmonderful Says:
Jul. 25, 2007, at 11:38 am
If the Loaf is a wonderful paper, it’s not even half as wonderful as the City Paper, if AltWeekly Awards are any measure: According to aan.org, the flagship Atlanta Creative Loafing (founded 1972) has won 18 awards over the years; CP (founded 1981) has won 47.

Adding the other the three Loaf papers into the total produces a whole eight more awards. Adding the Chicago Reader (founded 1971) results in another 27 awards. Final score of combined wonderfulness: home team 74, visitors 26.

But even without the Reader’s help–and handicapped by having to play nine years of catch-up–CP is quantifiably better than CL by more than 100 percent. (Start tallying prestigious food- and drama-criticism wins and the buyout looks even more ominous.) Of course, that’s just what a bunch of seasoned journalism folks and awards-committee cranks think. Haters should now jump on the fact that AAN has also given Cherkis five awards and Wemple two.

Chicago Reader's editor's memo regarding their new owners:

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12750

As for the future, this changeover shouldn't be regarded, as one blog commenter put it, as a sad day for the city of Chicago. The paper and Web site that so many Chicagoans depend on isn't going anywhere, and you -- house staff, freelance writers, illustrators, photographers -- are going to continue to be its lifeblood.

NY Press sold

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/business/media/01press.html?_r=2&ref=media&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

There are officially no decent alt weeklies in NYC now. Does this place have any definable culture anymore?

Manhattan Media owns four community weekly papers: Our Town, The West Side Spirit, The Westsider and The Chelsea Clinton News, the oldest community paper in Manhattan.

Waht?

I heard the city reinvents itself and all but if that's the oldest...

Clinton is another name for Hell's Kitchen, the neighborhood right next to Chelsea.

According to their website, The Chelsea Clinton News has been around for 65 years.

Makes you wonder if Bill & Hill chose the name with that knowledge in mind...