John Powers calls Tim Rutten's coverage of the federal antitrust investigation of Village Voice Media and New Times a host of bad words, including "maladroit," "inflammatory," and "bumbling." He is delighted that Rutten was scooped on what he had considered his own story by David Carr of The New York Times. Then, in the unkindest cut of all, Powers concludes, "I actually found myself feeling sorry for the poor bastard."
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."
When you call us wealthy monopolist bullies, "(d)o you mean this in the positive sense of wealthy, monopolist bullies?" New Times' Michael Lacey asks the Wall Street Journal, which last week ran a commentary by Daniel Akst on the New Times-Village Voice Media antitrust investigation. In his letter to the editor, Lacey says the Justice Dept. "is trying to create legal theory with this ... probe", which he calls a "stunning grab for unprecedented federal power." In a separate letter, Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger (and AAN Editorial Awards Host-for-Life), says his paper was "distressed to be lumped in with other alternative weekly papers."
The Justice Department's investigation of the Village Voice Media-New Times deal to close weeklies in Cleveland and Los Angeles is apparently driven by a concern "that the assisted suicide of New Times in Los Angeles reflects a narrowing of political perspectives in the city, and that it is the government's responsibility to create more ideological space," Harold Meyerson writes. He adds that if investigators really looked they would find at least as much "ideologically driven or monomaniacal" editorial slant at the dailies as at alternative newsweeklies.
Starting new alternative newspapers has been suggested as one legal remedy to the controversial closing of the Cleveland Free Times and New Times Los Angeles, Lucia Moses reports in E&P. Even without legal orders, new papers are "moving to fill the void," she writes. "Silver Lake Press, a 30,000-distribution biweekly in eastern L.A., will change its name to Los Angeles Alternative Press and expand distribution next month, while in Cleveland former Free Times staffers started a new alternative monthly, Urban Dialect."
Richard Riordan is preparing a prototype of a new weekly newspaper, The Los Angeles Examiner. The prototype, a 50-page tabloid, should be complete next week and "will be shopped around to prospective advertisers and investors," the Los Angeles Business Journal reports. Ken Layne, a member of the Examiner’s editorial staff and co-founder of the LAExaminer.com Web site, says the weekly would be a politically oriented, L.A.-centric paper aimed at affluent readers featuring commentary from well-known political writers and Hollywood insiders, but no sex ads. Former New Times Los Angeles writer Jill Stewart is a contributor to the prototype.
University of Chicago alumni Brian and Jan Hieggelke have agreed to print and distribute a campus paper, the Chicago Weekly News, with copies of Newcity included as an arts and culture supplement, Crain's Chicago Business reports. The arrangement boosts Newcity's circulation to 55,000, Co-Publisher Brian Hieggelke tells Crain's.
Columnist Daniel Gray-Kontar and cohorts are aiming Urban Dialects, a new monthly magazine, at young city and inner-ring suburban dwellers. "There is always a new paper popping up. You don't get too excited about one or the other," Pete Kotz, editor of New Times' Cleveland Scene, tells The Plain Dealer. Village Voice Media closed Cleveland Free Times in October under an agreement with New Times to close its competing paper in Los Angeles.
The former AAN-member paper was acquired by eXit Capital Group, the for-profit subsidiary of an educational foundation that promotes career training in the hospitality and service industries. Roy Allen, executive director of Endeavor Foundation, tells the Portland Press Herald that when it reopens on Jan. 15, Casco Bay Weekly will be a community newspaper that focuses on "good news" and features contributions from writers representing area schools, businesses and nonprofit groups.
