Ed.: Early this morning, an item was posted in the AAN Wire section of this Web site reporting that the State of California had closed its investigation of the New Times-Village Voice Media merger without taking any enforcement action. The item noted that this report contradicted an earlier article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian that had been linked from the AAN Web site, and that the same Bay Guardian article had mistakenly claimed that “the two chains were caught in 2002 in an illegal market-allocation agreement.”
To read the original AAN Wire item, click here.
Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond sent the following message to AAN in response to that AAN Wire item.
At the time we published the article, the California Attorney General’s Office told us that no decision had been made on the case. We learned yesterday that the AG has closed its case, and will report that fact in the future.
It remains our opinion — and that of the U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general of Ohio and California — that New Times and VVM engaged in an illegal market-allocation scheme. The fact that the case was settled without New Times admitting guilt doesn’t change what happened.
