Pete Kotz, editor of the surviving alt-weekly in Cleveland, admits it's "bad form to dance on the grave of another. " Honesty, however, "runs by a less civilized code," Kotz writes of the deal between New Times and Village Voice Media last week that shuttered VVM's Cleveland Free Times and New Times Los Angeles. "The Free Times' death wasn't unexpected or sudden. It was long, slow suicide," Kotz says. And he charges David Eden, the editor, with turning the paper into "a barking poodle with no house training."
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.
"There were tears, but no pink slips," Publisher Dan Pulcrano says of the closing of Metro Publishing Co.'s Oakland, Calif.-based Urbanview this week. Some of the staff will shift focus to Metro's Boulevard New Media, a network of 22 e-commerce sites for major cities across the United States. That business has grown rapidly this past year, Pulcrano says.
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."
Our City Weekly of Clarksville, Tenn., twice an applicant for AAN membership, has fallen victim to the "War on Terrorism," which has emptied this military town of a third of its population, says Publisher Jan Massey. In its seven-year history, Our City survived a direct hit by an F-4 tornado, embezzlement by an employee, and aggressive competition from a Gannett-owned daily newspaper. Its last issue was Aug. 28.
Greek shipping heir Taki Theodoracapolus, who writes Taki's Top Drawer for New York Press, is providing the financial backing for The American Conservative, a new magazine platform for Pat Buchanan's species of conservatism. The new magazine will be printed bi-weekly on newsprint, in a format similar to The Nation, and mailed to likely subscribers.
Preview Connecticut, a free monthly magazine, will be devoted to a first look at Connecticut arts events rather than reviews, says New Mass Media Inc. in a news release. New Mass Media also publishes four AAN-member alt-weeklies, Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate, Valley Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly. The glossy magazine will appear the first week of every month and will be distributed statewide.
The Fifth Estate, one of the oldest and most radical underground newspapers in America, is pulling up its roots in Detroit and moving to the Pumpkin Hollow commune outside Nashville, Tenn., the Detroit Free Press reports. "Of the hundreds of underground papers that arose across the United States in the 1960s, the Fifth Estate is the oldest survivor," the daily reports. The 37-year-old anarchist paper, which has an international readership, once presented the severed head of a pig to the Wayne State University board of governors and published a picture of the event with the headline "Pig's Head Meets Head Pigs."
San Diego CityBEAT published its inaugural issue last Wednesday, and the daily responds, "Bring it on." David L. Coddon writing in The San Diego Union-Tribune's weekly arts and entertainment guide, "Night & Day," says the new alt-weekly is trying to get a jump on both the daily and its 30-year-old alternative newsweekly rival, San Diego Reader, by publishing a day earlier. "Another 'voice' in local print media isn't bad," Coddon says.
