Times

Weighing in today on the NT-VVM merger on the Huffington Post, John Dicker says the usual arguments against media consolidation are not apt in this case, since New Times papers "do incredible reporting. Lots of it. All the time. Serious investigative shit that’s hard, if not impossible, to emulate in the blogosphere." In fact, Dicker argues that readers in many other large metro areas "would be well served if their alt weekly were gobbled up by the emerging behemoth." He's worried, though, that New Times will impose its editorial template and shrink the newsholes of the newly acquired papers, and that the company "doesn't host blogs or create interplay between its web and print versions."