Village Voice Sells Out To Stay Alive

Wow, you put Mayor Bloomberg, resplendent in cash money, on the cover of your alternative weekly and the next thing you know, you're sold to a bigger company! Village Voice Media, which represents the Voice and five other alt weeklies (including LA Weekly), is announcing its sale to the New Times today. New Times is the largest alt weekly publisher with eleven papers (Dallas Observer, Miami New Times, SF Weekly, Cleveland Scene), which would mean a combined circulation of 1.8 million readers. Or people who take the newspaper to put over their head during rainstorm. The NY Times writes, "The Village Voice newspaper, with its weekly circulation of 250,000, will be the flagship of the company as well as the national brand for a new alternative media Internet portal that the merged company is planning." Which means that you'll be able to follow your favorite indie band from town to town, and plan an alternative American roadtrip!

The Village Voice admits that free ad listings source craigslist, free daily papers like Metro and amNew York, and online sources like Slate and Salon have eaten into their revenue, proving that the hundred hippie readers who eschew the Internet are not enough of a demographic. Two other questions raised in the article are whether or not the deal will make it past regulators (the government hates it when alt weeklies collude together!) and whether or not the Voice will remain anti-establishment. Well, Gothamist suspects the Voice's livelihood is all about remaining anti-establishment, so there shouldn't be any worries there. The Voice can only pray for a Giuliani-esque mayor to fight against - Bloomberg is too soft!

Here's the VIllage Voice's memo regarding the sale.