Village Voice Media announced today it has sold The Pitch of Kansas City to Nashville-based media company Southcomm, Inc., which also owns LEO Weekly and Nashville Scene.
In a farewell column cloaked as a "Memo to Self," outgoing editor-in-chief of The Pitch C.J. Janovy tells readers (and herself):
Part of the reason you're handing over The Pitch to a new editor is because, after nearly 20 years as a journalist in this town, you've pretty much said everything about the city that you want to say -- for now, anyway.Janovy will be replaced by Westword web editor Joe Tone, who starts on June 28.
. . . it's time for me to do something else — and it's time for me to see what someone else can do with The Pitch.
Current Westword web editor Joe Tone has been named the next editor of The Pitch. He will take over for C.J. Janovy, who is moving on to a communications job at the University of Kansas Medical Center. "I'm just thrilled about getting to Kansas City and getting to work," says Tone, who has also served as the managing editor at Cleveland Scene. "The city is obviously brimming with great stories, and The Pitch newsroom is well armed to tell them. Filling those ass-kicking boots of C.J.'s is going to be no small feat, but I'm looking forward to trying."
Pitch staff writer Nadia Pflaum has won a 2009 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in the Feature Reporting for non-daily papers category for "Aftermath." Judges chose the winners from over 1,300 entries; the awards will be presented Oct. 2 during a ceremony in Las Vegas.
Missouri state Rep. Roman LeBlanc announced on Friday that he won't be seeking reelection after a story in The Pitch detailed his sexual involvement with an 18-year-old college student who he had mentored since she was 15. The student accused LeBlanc of sexually assaulting her, but prosecutors decided there was not enough evidence to file charges against LeBlanc, who has maintained his innocence.
The Kansas City alt-weekly's haul in the 2009 Heart of America awards included first-place finishes for Blog and Entertainment writing (The Pitch swept the latter category). In addition, editor C.J. Janovy was named "Member of the Year" for her "several years" of service as chair of the awards committee. The awards were given out by the Kansas City Press Club, a local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
In a Dec. 31 memo to all Village Voice Media staffers, CEO Jim Larkin and executive editor Michael Lacey say "this year we have found it necessary to make staff reductions and have placed all staff openings on hold." The memo also details "additional measures" being taken by the company to weather the current economy storm. All VVM senior managers and officers (including Larkin and Lacey) are taking 15 percent pay cuts, all publishers and editors are taking 10 percent pay cuts, and VVM is suspending its match into the company's 401(k) plan. MORE: Westword loses three editorial staffers, The Pitch lays off several, City Pages parts ways with two, and New Times Broward-Palm Beach eliminates several positions.
Eric Barton, the managing editor of Village Voice Media's The Pitch in Kansas City, will take over soon as the company's top editorial employee in Fort Lauderdale. According to a VVM press release, Barton "was closely involved in the growth of The Pitch's website" during his tenure in Kansas City, and he helped Pitch.com "double its traffic by adding blogs, video, audio, podcasts and slideshows." Barton takes the reins at New Times Broward-Palm Beach on September 22.
"Now I know how the line workers at a bottling plant must have felt when they heard about Laverne and Shirley!," Chris Packham of Kansas City's The Pitch writes in reaction to the sitcom "set in the office of a dishy alternative weekly publication and blog" that ABC is considering. "You totally know this thing will be like Sex and the City with nose rings and ironic T-shirts. TV is not always the worst -- for instance, it's awesome when it tells stories about Battlestars or Detective McNulty -- but this has the unmistakable whiff of horrible, usually depicted by cartoonists as wavy stink lines."
