To nobody’s surprise, this week’s announcement of the New Times-Village Voice Media merger has generated a boatload of coverage from every corner of the Internet. You could keep track of it all with a Google News search, but Google News isn’t very good yet at separating wheat from chaff. At aan.org we’re reading it all, from prosaic news reports to the looniest blog ravings, so we can point you to some of the more interesting coverage while sparing you endless repeats of the AP feed. We will continue to update this page throughout the week. (The items below in bold were added after this page was originally posted on Monday, Oct. 24.)
- Lacey: “Bigger is better” – Arizona Republic
- Editorial: New Times merger is full of ironies – Arizona Republic
- Schneiderman: Anti-establishment tone “part of our genetic makeup” – Associated Press
- Editorial: Corporate mergers threaten watchdog press – Berkeley Daily Planet
- Reaction to the Voice/New Times merger – Boston Phoenix
- Alt-weeklies need to drop “self-pity and boilerplate anti-corporate angst” – Boston’s Weekly Dig
- Business Week Media Reporter: Craigslist fears not theoretical for alt-weeklies – Business Week online
- Irate Blogger: “Long goodbye to an oppositional politics and aesthetics begins now” – Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
- City Pages Blogger: I hope New Times’ CEO “recognizes a good product when he sees one” – City Pages
- VVM “will be assimilated into the borg-like hive-mind” of New Times – Hipspinster
- “New Voice Times will be good for journalism in LA” – LA CityBeat
- Ex-LA Weekly Publisher on “takeover” – LA Observed
- LA Weekly Editor: “We’re going to try to keep an open mind” – Los Angeles Times
- Cooper: Apocalyptic merger commentary overlooks some realities – marccooper.com
- Former City Pages editor: New Times “not enamored of lots of cerebral beard stroking” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune
- Lacey: There’s a market for significant reporting – Nashville Scene
- The Future of Alternative Newspapers – National Public Radio
- “The notion that New Times is neocon is just ridiculous” – National Review Online
- Lacey: “This is a business that is based on performance. It isn’t a legacy.” – New York Magazine
- Lacey and Larkin slated to meet with Voice editor Forst in NYC – New York Post
- “Alternative journalism isn’t dead … it just looks a little different” – New York Press
- Nashville commentators agree: No changes for the Scene despite merger – Nashville City Paper
- Critic: It’s become like “a McDonalds or Starbucks situation” – National Public Radio
- Ex-New Times Editor: “Fearless, resourceful journalists are royalty at New Times” – Romenesko
- SFBG: Why regulators should block the deal – San Francisco Bay Guardian
- SFBG: New Times deal creates ugly stir – San Francisco Bay Guardian
- Daily newspaper writer: “A true alternative publication is informed by the politics of dissent” – San Francisco Chronicle
- Ex-Alt Weekly Reporter: New Times will take on “entrenched pieties of Seattle liberalism” – Seattle Post Intelligencer
- Seattle Weekly Founder: New Times more complex than “predictable Seattle liberalism” – Seattle Times
- Editorial: NT-VVM merger “bad for democracy” – Seattle Times
- Seattle Weekly Editor: “The matriarchy and the patriarchy are together at last” – Seattle Weekly
- New Times embraces local muckraking but shuns traditional political coverage – Seattle Weekly
- The Stranger’s Keck: “I know Ruxton would like us to stay” – The Stranger
- Two schools of thought among Voice employees – The Village Voice
- Untangling a proposed alternative-weekly mega-merger: Does Westword have a new owner? – Westword
