Independent Weekly's acquisition of Raleigh's alt-weekly the Spectator will allow the newly merged Independent to beef up its A&E coverage and leaves Creative Loafing with more cash for its four AAN-member papers. "One of us ultimately had to give in to create a single financially successful paper, and we yielded to local ownership," said Ben Eason, CEO of Creative Loafing Inc.
Kerry Farley, now general manager of Impact Weekly, says Yesse Communications "will probably only continue to exist as long as it owes money." Meanwhile, several key employees are back on the job at Impact, and Farley tells AAN News a sale of the paper is not imminent. In Springfield, Ill., Bud Farrar is busy taking back Illinois Times, a paper he owned for 20 years before selling it to Yesse in 1997.
Pointblank, a start-up alternative weekly, challenges Cityview as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Three former Cityview staffers, including former Editor Jon Gaskell, say they will provide a genuine alternative voice in Iowa's capital city. Cityview Publisher Connie Wimer says she welcomes the competition.
The ink is barely dry on the sale of SLAMM, a San Diego music biweekly, but the new owners have set Aug. 21 as the launch date for a new redesigned alternative newspaper, San Diego CityBeat. The new weekly will target the 21- to 45-year-old crowd and San Diego's central university and historic neighborhoods, Publisher Charles Gerencser says. "I wouldn't have moved my pregnant wife and sold my house in Los Angeles, where I've lived my whole life, if I didn't think this was going to be an amazingly successful venture," Gerencser says.
Yesse! Communications, in bankruptcy since spring of 2001, is struggling to keep its last two papers alive, but bounced paychecks and unpaid medical claims have sent another flood of employees out the door. Now managers are pointing fingers. Kerry Farley, vice president of operations, blames Michael Stern, Impact’s former business manager. Others blame both Farley and Yesse! President Craig Hitchcock for indifferent management and neglect. Farley and Hitchcock insist the Dayton, Ohio, weekly is still viable.
David Comden, group publisher of the renamed Southland Publishing Inc. (formerly Ventura Newspaper, Inc.), says San Diego is a “big-boy market.” The purchase of SLAMM, a San Diego music biweekly, gives Southland a chance to play in the big boys’ lot. Comden says it’s likely SLAMM will be transformed into a AAN-style alternative newsweekly.
Staff at the Dayton, Ohio paper have not been paid regularly since May 1, the local daily reports. Impact is one of the two remaining papers in the Yesse! Communications chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2001. Yesse! exec Kerry Farley says May 2002 was the paper’s best month yet, but that advertisers aren't paying up. "It’s a collections issue. But it’s also a problem with alternative newspapers in general," Farley said. The paper's editors have threatened to resign en masse.
Started as a hell-raising environmental, liberal weekly in 1968, the venerable Maine Times published its last issue last week. Christopher Hutchins, the weekly's latest owner (a conservative), told the staff he was no longer willing to cover the paper's losses, Editor Jay Davis tells the Portland Press Herald. "The Maine Times that folded yesterday isn't the Maine Times that we started in 1968," said [John] Cole, who lives in Brunswick. "Readers no longer were absolutely sure what the Maine Times stood for," the Press Herald reports. The Maine Times, formerly an AAN-member paper, hosted the 1987 AAN convention.
