Corporate Takeover, Alt-Style
New Times, Phoenix-based owner of the Dallas Observer and a string of other alternative weeklies, has purchased Village Voice Media. Here's Howard Kurtz's take on the deal, headlined "The Village Voice's No-Alternative News: Corporate Takeover."
Reports Kurtz:
As for the notion that the fabled counterculture papers of yore are becoming more corporate, [Village Voice CEO David] Schneiderman says: "The issue is, what's in the newspaper? I would challenge anyone who's critical of this to point to anything in our papers or the New Times papers that's establishment. It's flat-out not true."
Unlike the famously liberal Voice, however, New Times claims to be apolitical -- although Bruce Brugman, publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, says the chain does have leanings: "desert libertarianism on the rocks, with sprigs of neocon politics."
In today's highly competitive media landscape, companies are being forced to consolidate to survive, and alternative weeklies are no exception. Still, it's probably not the fate Norman Mailer had in mind when he co-founded the Voice in 1955.
Technorati tags: Journalism
posted by Scott Baradell at
9:00 PM
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