The Village Voice/New Times deal that closed New Times Los Angeles and VVM's Cleveland Free Times, is another sign of an "imploding economy," Cynthia Cotts writes in The Village Voice. She suggests that when VVM's venture capitalist owners start looking to cash out they could find a buyer in a daily newspaper chain or another alternative media company.
Iconoclastic alternative weeklies are doing business like the big boys, former Washington City Paper Editor David Carr writes in the New York Times. Carr reports that New Times received $8 million from Village Voice Media to close its money-losing New Times Los Angeles. "The willingness of the two ferociously competitive chains to make a deal in their common interest could mean that the next big deal by the companies could leave only one standing," Carr writes.
Village Voice Media paid NT Media more than $1 million to close New Times Los Angeles, sources tell the Los Angeles Times. New Times paid VVM a lesser amount to shutter Cleveland Free Times, the daily reports. An anti-trust lawyer says the transaction, negotiated quietly over the past three months, "could raise rather interesting antitrust issues."
"I hope it gets people to think about the nature of television and the business that it does." So says Tony Ortega, a New Times LA writer who admits that "maybe" he penned a "news story" reporting that NBC is about to cut a deal for "Survive This!" -- a "'Survivor' meets Hannibal Lechter"-style reality series starring the two California teenagers whose recent abduction and rape made the national news. An NBC spokeswoman says there is "no truth" to the story. Another New Times paper, the Dallas Observer, was sued earlier this year by two local officials targeted in a similar spoof.
Jane Dalea-Kahn, former LA advertising director for Vogue magazine, has been named publisher of New Times Los Angeles, New Times announced today. She replaces Jim Rizzi, who "will be leaving New Times after contributing many years of work toward the company's growth in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver and Phoenix," the company says in a news release. Josh Cooperman, formerly a sales executive for Clear Channel radio powerhouses KFI and KLAC, joins the paper as retail sales director.
Part 2 of Susan Goldsmith's series on LA's Mexican Mafia tells the "Greek Tragedy" story of Max Torvisco, a "nerdy kid" who grew up to become one of the underworld's most feared and sadistic capos. Using exclusive documents obtained from the FBI and Torvisco's testimony against other gang members, Goldsmith spent two months researching and writing the series for New Times Los Angeles..
In a New Times LA exclusive, Susan Goldsmith obtains chilling court-sealed FBI documents that have never seen the light of day until this week’s edition of the alternative newsweekly. Using internal FBI reports and transcribed recordings made by FBI informants and agents in meetings with members of the Mexican Mafia, Goldsmith’s 6500-word story of mob violence questions why the FBI failed to make arrests with such ample evidence of conspiracy to commit murder.
