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Consolidation Blues

voicelogo-181.gifNot since Joe's Asprin Stacking Blog joined forces with Alexis's Rice Crispe World Blog to form Joe & Alex's Little House of Horrors Blog has a merger of this magnitude so shaken Seattle's media environment. Villiage Voice Media, owner of The Seattle Weekly, has announced a merger with alt-weekly publisher New Times Media.

Being absolutely ignorant of the specifics of this merger as we currently are, Seattlest can safely say that we are not fans of media mergers. From Joe and Alex's Love Shack to AOL Time Warner we think that the readers lose every time. The Weekly sounds none too thrilled themselves with Chuck Taylor breaking it down over at SeattleWeekly.com:

If the Justice Department approves the Village Voice Media-New Times deal, it's unclear what sort of personality the new Village Voice Media might assume. Separately, the two chains are quite different, with VVM exercising almost no editorial influence from New York on the various papers. New Times is more involved with its papers, in steering both editorial approach and business practices. For example, New Times embraces aggressive local muckraking that has been at times noteworthy, and its papers have won many awards. But New Times shuns traditional political coverage and its papers do not publish electoral endorsements. And there is a certain sameness to many of the papers that suggests a non-local heritage.
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By Dan in on October 24, 2005 3:28 PM

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  • Andy
  • Jarofcardinals

    Now that The Stranger is competing against the largest alt.weekly conglomerate, will we no longer see Stranger "news" stories such as this?



    Here's the Cliff's Notes version (by Dan Savage): "What’s it mean for Seattle Weekly? I know for a fact that the New Times folks don’t think very highly of Seattle Weekly’s editorial content, editorial staffers, or the gap between Seattle Weekly’s towering self-regard and Seattle Weekly’s limp product. If I were a Weekly staffer, I would get my resumé out there—which is something many nervous Weekly staffers have already been doing."



    I believe Donald Rumsfeld used the same "I know for a fact" line when talking about Iraqi WMDs, and McCarthy when warning us of Commies in Hollywood. That's a mighty way to belittle a demographic of, what, 35 Seattle Weekly editorial staffers?





    Especially when your newest targest is capable of rants such as this.

  • I was an art director for six years at an alt-weekly in Tampa, Florida. During my final year, the paper became part of a chain (Creative Loafing). All of the life was sucked out of the paper at that point (and I packed my bags for Seattle). This type of consolidation is a common scenario in the alt-weekly world, with many of them centralizing jobs and sharing stories to save money. Personally, I think "alternative" is a misnomer for most of these papers, as most of them are striving to become a little more mainstream to attract more advertising dollars.

  • 8Bit Jake

    Seattle Weakly?

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