Executive editor Tim Redmond says his paper has obtained documents that "include a May 27, 2005, draft of a merger agreement between Village Voice Media and New Times." According to Redmond, "the draft calls for the creation of a new company controlled by a nine-member board," with New Times owning 62 percent of the new venture and controlling five board seats, and VVM retaining the rest. New Times owns 11 AAN papers and VVM owns six.
At least five L.A. Weekly senior editorial and art department employees -- including veteran education reporter Howard Blume -- have filed grievances with management via the International Association of Machinists, the paper's bargaining unit, reports L.A. Alternative Press. Most are alleging that they're being pushed out of their jobs without adequate union process as specified in their contracts and only because they make some of the paper's top union salaries. These charges come on the heels of the September ouster of several veteran employees at The Village Voice, which, like L.A. Weekly, is owned by Village Voice Media.
Twelve former employees of the Cleveland Free Times have filed a lawsuit in Ohio against New Times and Village Voice Media, reports the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The suit is the latest fallout from an October 2002 deal between the two companies that shuttered Free Times and New Times Los Angeles. The deal led to a Justice Department antitrust investigation that culminated in a consent decree in which neither company admitted guilt. The suit alleges that the workers who lost their jobs when the two papers closed were terminated illegally; the lawyer who filed the suit is seeking class-action certification.
"No one knows what Nashville Scene publisher Albie Del Favero's announced resignation will mean for the city's alternative newsweekly," the Scene's Matt Pulle reports, "and that's as much a testament to the man as it is to the hazards of chain ownership." In 1999, Scene co-founders Del Favero and Bruce Dobie entered a complex business agreement that resulted in the formation of Village Voice Media, which owns a half-dozen alternative weeklies around the country. The Scene's next publisher will be named by the publishing group's CEO in New York, David Schneiderman.
Skip Oliva, president of the nonprofit organization Citizens for Voluntary Trade, filed a motion Tuesday with a federal court in Ohio to intervene in the Justice Department's antitrust case against Village Voice Media and NT Media. If granted intervention, Oliva says he will appeal the decision approving a government-mandated settlement in the closure of papers in Cleveland and Los Angeles. Oliva's 15-page brief to the U.S. District Court in Cleveland details numerous allegations of misconduct and unconstitutional abuse of prosecutorial power by Justice.
New Times Executive Editor Mike Lacey calls Cleveland Free Times' recent attacks on New Times and Cleveland Scene "an explosion of bluster." Lacey accuses Free Times' Editor David Eden and Publisher Matt Fabyan of concocting "conspiracies wrapped in an ad hominem attack" and of publishing "organ discharge." He cites sales and profit figures that starkly contradict Free Times' assertion that it was winning the alternative newsweekly battle in Cleveland.
Still on the alternative weekly beat, Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times critiques former mayor Richard Riordan's new weekly prototype and finds the LA Examiner aimed at the people who elected him -- affluent, educated and mostly white. Rutten, who reported on the antitrust investigation of Village Voice Media and New Times, takes a last slap at the two chains for "a sad and venal chapter in an otherwise vigorous -- often courageous -- history" of the alternative press in Los Angeles.
That's what The Village Voice's Cynthia Cotts asks when she looks at the consent decree signed by Village Voice Media and New Times that settled an antitrust investigation of their agreement to close competing papers in Los Angeles and Cleveland. She suggests the settlement, which requires the companies to resell assets to groups attempting to start new weeklies, "might represent a violation of the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and/or the prohibition on selective prosecution."
