“Neither judges with gavels nor editors with delusions fueled by martinis can tell people which website or newspaper to read,” said VVMH executive editor Michael Lacey.
Village Voice Media executive associate editor Andy Van De Voorde tells the Tennessean that the Scene's rumored financial troubles were not what led the company to sell the paper to Nashville-based SouthComm, Inc. "I have no reason to believe that anyone wasn't pleased with [the Scene] financially," he says. Van De Voorde also says that Scene editor Pete Kotz, who came to Nashville after VVM's Cleveland Scene was merged with Free Times, will leave the paper but remain in the VVM chain. Whether other staffing changes are in the works is not yet clear, though Van De Voorde notes that all Scene and Nfocus magazine employees will receive two weeks severance, plus a week of pay for every year of service and unpaid vacation time from VVM -- whether or not they keep their jobs under the new owners.
Washington City Paper recently saved $8,000 by dropping all of its syndicated comics, the Chicago Reader's Michael Miner reports. City Paper still carries one local strip, "Dirtfarm," only because author Ben Claassen lets the paper run it for free. "City Paper feels like family to me," Claassen tells Miner by way of explanation. But Lynda Barry, who quit her "Ernie Pook's Comeek" strip, and her friend Matt Groening are feeling less familial these days about their former alt-weekly clients. Nevertheless, Groening keeps plugging away, creating "Life in Hell" every week even though his success with The Simpsons has left him financially secure. "I like sitting down once a week and knocking something out all by myself," says Groening. "The rest of my life is full of collaborators."
The San Francisco Bay Guardian executive editor offers his take on the deal announced last week that will merge the Cleveland Free Times and Cleveland Scene under new owners Times Shamrock. He wonders why "VVM couldn't create a monopoly, [but] another newspaper outfit apparently can." He's referring to when the Justice Department nixed a similar 2002 deal between New Times and Village Voice Media (then two separate companies) that shuttered the Free Times. Justice forced the sale of Free Times to a group of investors, and the paper reopened in May 2003. "I'll leave it to you to speculate on why we couldn't do this deal, but Times Shamrock could," VVM executive editor Andy Van De Voorde says. Redmond says the Justice Department has yet to respond to his request for comment.
The staff of the St. Louis alt-weekly was unable to attend when the three-year old, River Front Times, made his debut March 18 at Fairmount Park. "If we'd been able to go, I'm convinced we would have cheered him on to victory," Editor Tom Finkel tells AAN News. "But we also probably would have bet the odds down and no one would have made any money." Former staff writer and racing aficionado Mike Seely convinced the horse's owner to change his name from Pollys Jaybird last year as long as the paper paid the $100 name-registration fee. The staff is planning to attend River Front Times' next race in full force. "As usual, the hopes of our company ride on a longshot," adds Andy Van de Voorde, executive associate editor for Village Voice Media.
The details of the out-of-court settlement are confidential, but it does include the terms on which Sutcliffe Associates' SelectAlternatives program will license Tele-Publishing Inc.'s patents and other intellectual property, the two companies announced yesterday. TPI and SA are both AAN Associate Members and both will continue to provide personal advertising technology to newspapers. "The settlement provides publishers with some choices going forward," says TPI President David Dinnage. "We feel that this is a win for all parties involved."
Tele-Publishing Inc. filed suit Sept. 22 in U.S. District Court in Arizona against Andrew B. Sutcliffe and his Tucson-based company, Sutcliffe Associates. Last year Sutcliffe, who was the founding president of TPI, launched a personals service, known as SelectAlternatives, that competes against the service of his former employer. TPI claims that Sutcliffe and five AAN papers that use SelectAlternatives infringed on four patents it owns, which Sutcliffe co-invented when he was TPI's president. The publishing companies that own the five AAN papers are named as co-defendants in the suit. Sutcliffe has issued a response saying that the suit is without merit, and he promises to mount a vigorous defense.
