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.
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.
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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