Results tagged “newtimes”

The Village Voice has a very timely retrospective of its first fifty years-- including a great gallery of front page images. When we were growing up in the city, the Voice was the end-all-and-be-all of alternative news weeklies-- it had far left politics, alterno-culture, racy features, salacious ads at the back-- the whole deal. Over the last few years the Voice has been trending downhill-- sort of becoming a slightly classier New York Press-- and this week it was announced that the New Times conglomerate purchased the paper. It seems unlikely the Voice will ever return to its own glory-- which is too bad-- they've done some amazing stuff in the past.

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!

Head to Columbus Circle, well look in that direction anyway and you will find the gigantic Biography billboard in lights promoting the Biography channel and corresponding series on A&E. Just beneath it you will find an old school light ticker that alternates between the time and temperature, short term forecast, and a plug for the next episode of Biography of course. This structure has been long standing though not always for Biography. Gothamist remembers this from days growing up when big signs and billboards were much more impressive and intriguing than they are now. We don't remember what companies were sponsoring this particular billboard though, we think we remember Hitachi as one... perhaps you readers can help?