SF Weekly's debut of a new four-color glossy cover this week makes it the sixth Village Voice Media Holdings (VVMH) print publication to adopt the sleek, magazine-style format, and the company plans on rolling out glossy covers at all of its publications within the next eighteen to 24 months, according to a release. "The glossy is the next step in our evolution," president and chief operating officer Scott Tobias says in a statement.
Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC announced today that it has partnered with happy-hour guide GoTime to launch a mobile app detailing more than 15,000 happy hour deals in 30 cities across the country. Users can search happy hours by name, location, time and even type of cuisine, all within one location-aware mobile application."We want to be everywhere our readers are, and that's out on the town, anywhere in the country," VVMH president and COO Scott Tobias says in a release. "We own the night -- and this app really delivers on that." MORE: Seattle Weekly's Mike Seely has more on the origins of the partnership with GoTime.
Nine and a half years after OC Weekly's R. Scott Moxley broke the story about well-known AIDS doctor George Steven Kooshian having injected patients with saline and vitamins instead of the expensive drugs they were billed for, the 59-year-old was sentenced Monday to 15 months in federal prison. Kooshian was also ordered to pay $660,955 in restitution to 18 insurance companies for 21 patients who were subdosed.
Longworth, who is the co-founder of Cinematical.com and former editor SpoutBlog, will replace Scott Foundas, who last month announced he was leaving the Weekly to become the associate program director of The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Longworth will begin her tenure at the Weekly on Jan. 18. In other Weekly news, the paper has hired a new staff reporter: Gene Maddaus, formerly of the Daily Breeze.
The South Florida alt-weekly ran a lengthy cover story this week on the problems facing South Florida's newspapers, and decided that it would only be fair to report on its own struggles as well. Reporter Lisa Rab says that the New Times newsroom staff has shrunk by four (to 13) and its circulation has dropped from around 80,000 to 54,500 over "the past couple of years." She also talks to Village Voice Media president and chief operating officer Scott Tobias, who says there are no plans afoot to make the paper online-only, to sell it or to merge its operations with its sister paper to the south, Miami New Times.
Scott Foundas has been named the new associate program director of The Film Society of Lincoln Center, where he will work on series and event programs, including the New York Film Festival. "Scott's writing is an exhilarating dialogue with artists and audiences alike," society executive director Mara Manus tells Variety. "It is this vibrancy, along with Scott's deep film knowledge, that will contribute greatly to our growing organization, ensuring we continue to offer a vital place of serious film culture." IndieWire's Anne Thompson says Foundas' move is another nail in the coffin for the "dying art" of film criticism. "As one of the best critics working today, Foundas should be anticipating a long and happy career," she writes. "He's giving it up to program movies. This should not happen."
Republican Michael D. Duvall has resigned from the California state Assembly amid the scandal uncovered on Tuesday by OC Weekly and KCBS/KCAL. The staunch conservative was caught on video talking graphically about two affairs, one of which was with a lobbyist whose clients had business before a committee on which Duvall sat. Weekly reporter R. Scott Moxley and TV reporter Dave Lopez were both chasing the story at the same time on Tuesday -- literally -- as they followed Duvall around the capitol, trying to get him to respond. In a statement, Duvall says his resignation "is in no way an admission that I had an affair or affairs," adding that his only "offense was engaging in inappropriate story-telling."
Eastbay Express Publishing LP, an entity controlled by former Express owner Village Voice Media, has reached a settlement with two of the paper's current owners to settle a suit VVM filed earlier this year. The suit alleged that Hal Brody and Express editor Stephen Buel still owed VVM $500,000 under the terms of the 2007 deal in which the paper was sold. Brody and VVM executive vice president Scott Spear say the parties have resolved that dispute and all other issues raised by the two parties in connection with the transaction. "We are pleased to have been able to reach an agreement satisfactory to both parties," Brody says in a statement. "It puts aside this distraction so we can all concentrate on running our daily business."
The Voice Local Network will allow select publishers to monetize their content using Village Voice Media's locally based sales forces. VVM says the network is designed for web publishers that match both the content and the core demographics of its newspapers. "We've been working the streets, merchant to merchant, for years developing personal relationships in all of our cities," VVM president and chief operating officer Scott Tobias says. "Through these connections, we've developed a very high local CPM web business, and it's a natural evolution to help other publishers tap into our network of advertisers."
VVM's digital publishing strategy has been in the news quite a bit lately, whether it was the company's partnership with a social-networking site or its use of Digg to help drive traffic to its stories. Chief operating officer Scott Tobias and web and digital operations director Bill Jensen spoke with AAN News this week about where the paper is going with web publishing. They tell us that digital is a growth area for VVM, both in terms of pageviews and revenue, and they talk about new projects like geo-targeted ads and a national food website.
