That was quick. Less than one business day after David Blum was fired, Village Voice Media announce that the editor of New Times Broward-Palm Beach will replace him. Ortega, 43, who started his career in 1995 at the Phoenix New Times, is the third editor-in-chief hired by the Manhattan alt-weekly since Don Forst left 14 months ago. "Lincoln promoted General Grant late in the game. Stalin promoted Marshall Zukoff late in the game," explains Executive Editor Michael Lacey. "Tony Ortega is the right man at the right time."
On Friday afternoon, a Missouri judge ordered The Pitch and the Kansas City Star to purge online stories about the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU) that were based on a confidential letter written by BPU's attorney. Judge Kelly Moorehouse's ruling (PDF file) states that the letter is "privileged legal communication," and also barred the papers from publishing information contained in the confidential document or "otherwise referring to it in any public medium." Attorneys for The Pitch have requested an emergency hearing to settle the matter. "This judge made a serious error," says Steve Suskin, legal counsel for the Pitch's parent company, Village Voice Media. "The injunction so clearly violates the First Amendment that we have no choice but to fight for these fundamental principles in the appellate courts." (The Pitch's original story is still available online in a Google cache.)
At a Friday afternoon meeting, Village Voice staffers were told that Blum was "no longer the editor of the paper" as a result of unspecified comments he made that were "unacceptable," according to Gawker. Radar reports that Bill Jensen, director of Web and digital operations for Village Voice Media, has been named interim editor.
The Boston Phoenix takes a look at the editorial fallout, or lack thereof, resulting from the merger, talking to staffers who have quit, some who have stayed, and VVM Executive Editor Mike Lacey himself. While former City Pages staff writer Britt Robson says that one of the reasons he quit was VVM's culture of "cheapskate-tough-guy swagger," Nashville Scene editor Liz Garrigan says the new management has helped her. "They've been really good to me, in the sense that my budget's bigger and I've been able to really hire up," she says. "They get a bad rap in so many ways, but they're committed to good shit in the paper."
The parent company of SF Weekly and East Bay Express hired local litigation specialists Kerr & Wagstaffe to replace Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffein in the predatory-pricing lawsuit brought against those two papers by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Kerr & Wagstaffe is the third firm involved in the defense of the lawsuit, set to go to trial in mid-July, reports Legal Pad, a blog focusing on California law.
Britt Robson, who will leave March 1, tells the Star-Tribune his chief reasons for quitting were editor Steve Perry's recent resignation and the hiring of an editor from out of town to succeed him. "There was absolutely no pressure on me to leave," Robson says. "I just didn't want to be an unhappy, divisive force on the staff, which I would have been if I had stayed." He had spent over 10 years at the paper and was among Steve Perry's closest confidants, according to the Star-Tribune.
The latest to leave are OC Weekly feature editor Rebecca Schoenkopf, whose Commie Girl column won last year's big-paper AltWeekly Award for best political column, and City Pages music critic Jim Walsh, who served two stints at the Minneapolis alt-weekly, the latest beginning in 2003. OC Register columnist Frank Mickadeit reports that Schoenkopf has "been ready to leave the Weekly for some time, simply because she needed a change" and that "her dream job would be editor-in-chief of an alternative weekly somewhere." In her farewell column, Schoenkopf puts the paper's recent ownership change into context: "It could have been worse: Dean Singleton could have bought our newspaper. At least this way, we still get to call people twats." (OC Weekly music editor Chris Ziegler also left the paper, Schoenkopf notes in her column.)
Will Swaim is the second Village Voice Media editor to resign this week over "philosophical differences" with the company's new owners. OC Weekly employees tell the Los Angeles Times that they were expecting the resignation, "because it was apparent that (Swaim's) autonomy to run Orange County's only alternative newspaper had eroded since it was purchased last year by the New Times publishing chain." Swaim tells the Times that his differences with the new owners were on "the business side," and did not pertain to editorial content. "They run a very complicated organization and want to have standardization across all 18 markets," he says. "I don't argue whether it's dumb or wrong. It's just not my way." CORRECTION: VVM has papers in 17 markets.
The Village Voice Media paper announced yesterday that Cleveland Scene managing editor Kevin Hoffman would replace Steve Perry, who resigned earlier this week. Former City Pages co-owner Tom Bartel (the brother of the paper's current publisher, Mark Bartel) tells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he thinks Hoffman and present VVM management deserve a chance. "They've produced some terrific editors and stories over the years," Bartel says. "But anybody who comes in from out of town will have a certain learning curve. He needs to know the community he's covering."
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