Contrary to a Feb. 8 report in the San Francisco Bay Guardian that was linked from our Web site yesterday, AAN has learned that California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced on Feb. 6 (PDF) that his office has closed its investigation of the merger without taking any enforcement action. In addition, the Bay Guardian article was in error in stating that "the two chains were caught in 2002 in an illegal market-allocation agreement." In fact, New Times and Village Voice Media signed a consent degree without admitting guilt in that case. Lockyer's letter stated that his office "will continue to monitor" the merged company's compliance with the settlement.
To read the Bay Guardian's Letter to the Editor in response to the item above, click here.
In a Jan. 31 press release, Scott Spear, senior vice president of Village Voice Media, announced that the merger has closed. The merger plans of New Times Media, LLC, and Village Voice Media were first announced on Oct. 23, 2005; in late November, the Department of Justice declared that it would not block the merger.
The new CEO of Village Voice Media announced Tuesday that Michael Cohen has been named publisher of the chain's flagship paper. In an e-mail message to Village Voice staffers, Larkin said that Cohen resigned his current position as publisher of Miami New Times and will take the helm at the Voice on Monday Jan. 30. Cohen, who has been in the alternative-weekly publishing business for 22 years, began his career in ad sales at the Baltimore City Paper in 1983 and moved to New York five years later to help launch the New York Press as its ad director. He returned to New York in 2000 to serve briefly as publisher of the Press; he also served stints as publisher of AAN member papers Fairfield County Weekly and Philadelphia Weekly. In a separate e-mail to the Voice staff, Judy Miszner announced that Tuesday was her last day as the paper's publisher. "I thank all of you for making these the 7 best years of my career," she wrote.
According to Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, Attorney General Jim Petro is looking for potential antitrust violations that would result from the merger. The paper quotes a senior attorney with Petro's office who said the deal "raises new concerns that combining these two publishing companies would eliminate or restrain competition between them in some markets where they operate rival newsweeklies with overlapping advertising and news coverage." (Ed.: VVM and New Times no longer operate "rival newsweeklies" in the same market.) The attorney was commenting in response to a letter complaining about the merger written by Terry Smith, the editor of AAN-member paper The Athens News.
Los Angeles Times staff writer Scott Martelle describes the fears and hopes for L.A. Weekly's role in the New Times-controlled Village Voice Media. He details the turbulent recent history of alt-weeklies in Los Angeles and speaks to several notable Angelenos. Local pol Jackie Goldberg, "a frequent target of New Times LA columnists" during New Times' previous residency in the city, says: "They were not just a gadfly, they were an assault vehicle." Martelle also speaks to a few current L.A. Weekly staff members, including editor Laurie Ochoa, and addresses speculation that Phoenix New Times editor Rick Barrs will replace her. (Barrs says that he hasn't been asked, but adds that he would "have mixed emotions about it.")
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