Village Voice Media being acquired by New Times very soon

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...

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

Rumor has it that more such cuts just happened at the Washington City Paper.

Art and production moves to Atlanta 10-26. Creative Loafing budget cuts and production changes mean music coverage will be reduced further, and deadlines will be earlier.

New Times / Village Voice Media head Lacey arrested.. for a very interesting reason.

http://www.kpho.com/news/14376424/detail.html

sorry, no titillation here, but a pretty fascinating story.

Yep

Titillation provided in the form of inmates with pink underwear,

joe arpaio is nuts.

wow that is so fucked.

The subpoenas also seek online profiles of anyone who read four specific articles about Arpaio and profiles of anyone who visited the paper's Web site since Jan. 1, 2004. Also sought was information on what Web users did while on the site, the story said.

http://www.apbweb.com/images/articles-5-16-07.gif

this isn't wdylll dude

phwoarr

hahah xpost

here's yer titillation:

watch me shoot down my future career prospects while drunk: new times media can suck my cock until i cum blood

-- PARTYMAN (dubplatestyle), Monday, September 4, 2006 9:45 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

classic post

Ooh la la, Jess' bloodcum.

Subpoenas being dropped.

wow, a small victory for the SFBG, esp the "for immediate collection" part which may not be so small!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/07/MNG21BF2MH.DTL&tsp=1

So, Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins are gone.

RIP zombie voice.

Ny Times re this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/nyregion/05voice.html?nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=tha29&adxnnlx=1294236058-/ZtTDoIbfQ7VpktJUdTIUw

Maybe they have inspired some younger less-well paid Voice staffers and freelancers (who may or may not have the time to do investigative reporting because of whatever else they do to pay their bills)

So the Voice site is basically all about girls gone wild titty slideshows now?

Just one of the choices, isn't it? A few folks read their online music crit offerings, I guess.

I look through Musto and the increasingly scant film/theatre coverage, that's about it.

City Pages ran a Phoenix New Times story about DMX on the cover this week.

Not that I'm not interested in DMX, just that I don't recall syndicated cover stories.

DC City Paper has been running less newsprint pages. Between the recession, the diminished number of folks reading newsprint, the financial limitations of the owners of these publications and online competition, alt-weeklies need feisty ad salespeople I guess who can somehow get more ads and bring in revenue.

TBF I think a lot of the functions of an alt-weekly actually can be properly taken over, if not done better, by a plethora of websites (music and film coverage, bizarro classifieds, rancorous firespitting about whatever). The main thing to be missed is the local investigative stuff. Still not sure there's a good web model for that yet, although I guess someone will figure it out and maybe they already have.

Whee

http://gawker.com/5945821/village-voice-medias-last-ditch-effort-to-save-itself-will-probably-fail

Maybe NY ilxors can buy it.

So I wonder how SouthComm, which publishes eight alt-weeklies, including the Atlanta one and the Washington City Paper is doing?

http://storify.com/connorsimpson/tricia-romano-on-the-village-voice

Damn. Im getting misty eyed, seriously.

Is their mangement style less damaging at some of their other papers?

Under the terms of the agreement, Voice Media Group will own and operate the following print publications and corresponding digital properties: Village Voice (New York), LA Weekly (Los Angeles), Westword (Denver), New Times (Phoenix), Houston Press, Dallas Observer, Riverfront Times (St. Louis), New Times (Miami), City Pages (Minneapolis), New Times (Broward), SF Weekly (San Francisco), Seattle Weekly, and OC Weekly (Orange County). Voice Media Group will also purchase and take over VVMH's national advertising division, which will now be called VMG National. VMG National will continue to sell national advertising for more than 56 partner sites and publications, reaching more than 3 million readers across 56 key metro markets each week.

http://www.wvva.com/story/19619001/newly-formed-denver-holding-company-voice-media-group-to-acquire-village-voice-media-publishing-properties

management

thanks for the link to the tricia romano twitter thing, good read

I had not seen the actual print Voice in a long time (would read some of it on the Internet) and then last week I saw one, holy shit it's a pamphlet

love this:

I miss Xgau, wearing trademark jeans, rock T, headphones, stopping and saying: "Tricia: The new Common record," and sighing.

Man, the stuff we made fun of upthread is SO much better than what they publish now

Fire sale is on! I guess. Seattle Weekly and SF Weekly have both been sold.

just struck me how much pathos is in the phrase "acquired by new times" (or "discarded by new times," for that matter)

Thought maybe this revive was about another wave of classic jazz albums we should hear before we die.

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/01/09/sf-weekly-sold-to-bay-guardian-publisher/

, Voice Media Group will continue to own and operate the following print publications and corresponding digital properties: Village Voice (New York), LA Weekly (Los Angeles), Westword (Denver), New Times (Phoenix), Houston Press, Dallas Observer, Riverfront Times (St. Louis), New Times (Miami), City Pages (Minneapolis), New Times (Broward) and OC Weekly (Orange County).

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-Weekly-sold-to-Sound-Publishing-4179877.php