RIP “alternative” weekly media

[Guest guest]

RANDY SHAW, BEYOND CHRON - The New Times Corp., publisher of the SF

Weekly, East Bay Express, and 15 other weeklies, announced that it has

acquired the Village Voice and the Los Angeles Weekly. Both publications

will not only cease making political endorsements, but will likely

replace politically progressive writers and columnists with those

espousing the chain’s standard mix of cynicism and anti-government

libertarianism. The transformation of weekly papers from the voice of

the anti-war movement and sixties youth culture to mere vehicles for

corporations to reach consumers between 21-35 is now largely complete.

 

The New Times Corp.’s purchase of the most prominent remaining stars of

the alternative weekly press---the Voice and LA Weekly---marks a sad

turning point for progressive activists. While the Voice lacked the

luster of its 1960’s-80’s pre-Internet heyday, the paper still featured

important progressive writers like Sydney Schanberg and filled important

information gaps in mainstream coverage of New York City politics and

culture.

 

For those of us in California, the likely future purging of the

progressive LA Weekly is even more troubling. The LA Weekly helped link

the city’s geographically scattered progressives, promoted the agenda of

Progressive LA, strongly backed the Villaraigosa mayoral campaigns both

in 2001 and 2005, and has writers like Harold Meyerson who are among the

most perceptive in America.

 

The LA Weekly is far and away the best progressive print source on state

politics, and the best general circulation source on local and state

labor union issues. Based on the New Times track record, the LA Weekly’s

strong pro-union tilt will soon be gone, as will its in-depth coverage

of worker issues from a labor perspective.

 

In the mid-1990’s, there were three progressive weekly newspapers in Los

Angeles. Thanks to New Times, soon there will be none.

 

New Times provides a cookie-cutter product that includes massive

advertisements, a thorough entertainment calendar, a few short news

items, and one long story that rarely addresses social or economic

unfairness. When New Times does touch such topics, it writes cover

stories with titles like “The Case Against Rent Control.”

 

New Times owners Michael Lacey and James Larkin are political

libertarians whose publications routinely criticize progressives and

their institutions. Both the East Bay Express and SF Weekly shifted to

this New Times paradigm after acquired by the corporation.

 

Unless the Bush Justice Department intervenes to stop these latest

acquisitions on antitrust grounds (fat chance),New Times will soon

control 25 percent of the 7.6 million in circulation claimed by the

Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. . .

 

The Bay Guardian was the only local news source covering the

negotiations leading to New Times’ announcement. The weekly has reason

to be concerned, as New Times’ 25% control of the weekly market and its

new presence in New York City and Los Angeles does not bode well for

Guardian advertising revenue.

 

The SF Weekly disputes that it is offering cut-rate ads as a strategy to

put the Guardian out of business, and instead attributes the Guardian’s

financial decline to increased printing and occupancy costs and

reduction in advertising reductions following the dot-com boom. While a

court will decide this controversy, one need only look at the practices

of the Gannet Corporation to see where New Times may be heading. . .

 

Gannett’s longtime strategy is to enter a market with an established

home-controlled paper, destabilize the competition through selling ads

below-cost, and then offer to buy its competitor at a price too generous

to refuse. Following the sale, the original paper is closed down and

Gannett sets new advertising rates reflective of its monopoly in the

marketplace.

 

New Times’ recent history shows that it appears to be following

Gannett’s lead. And unless San Francisco residents and business begin to

speak out against monopoly control of the local “alternative” weekly

media, then the Bay Guardian could well go the way of its New York City

and Los Angeles colleagues.

 

www.beyondchron.org/default.asp?sourceid= & smenu=110 & twindow= & mad= & sdetail=264

 

FIFTY YEARS OF THE VILLAGE VOICE

 

NAT HENTOFF - I arrived at The Village Voice in 1958 in urgent need of a

wide-ranging forum because for years I had been typed by editors as only

knowing about jazz. No pay was offered me then, but I was promised that

I could write about anything I wanted to. Soon I was immersed in a

" newspaper culture " I'd never experienced before. Many of the

" assignments " were self-propelled, and the writing had to be in your own

voice if you could find it. (This came to be known later as " personal

journalism. " ) Jack Newfield, who first became known through The Village

Voice , used to say that co-founder and first editor in chief Dan Wolf

" orchestrated the obsessions of his writers. " We were indeed a

passionately opinionated motley lot. Dan Wolf prided himself on not

hiring anyone with experience as a professional journalist. He wanted

writers who hadn't been conditioned to the rules and restraints of the

conventional press.

 

There was no party line at the Voice. Dan Wolf hardly ever wrote an

editorial. And members of the staff continually differed with one

another, not only in the small confines of the office but continually in

its pages.

 

For one of many examples, in 1968, when Albert Shanker, head of the

United Federation of Teachers, closed down the entire school system in a

fierce dispute with the black leadership of the Ocean Hill–Brownsville

school district, there was constant warfare in our pages among the

regular writers - and from many contributors on both sides. . .

 

I was invited to speak at Harvard to the Nieman fellows, highly regarded

professional journalists chosen to spend a year in Cambridge, where they

could take any courses they wanted. During my talk, a professor auditing

the session said to me in exasperation: " What I can't stand about the

Voice is that I have no idea of what its editorial policy is. There's no

clean line. " . . .

 

Furthermore, back then there was no line between " objective " reporting

and being part of the story you were writing about. That was especially

true during the Vietnam War, when some of us were active participants in

marches, teach-ins, and even civil disobedience. I was in a crowd trying

to obstruct an induction center.

 

One morning, I got a call from a young reporter, one of our best, Don

McNeill, who was covering an anti-war demonstration at Grand Central

Terminal that the police tried to break up by force, including smashing

heads. Our reporter, who had been clubbed, said hurriedly to me on the

phone, " Should I put in the story that I've got blood on my shirt, or is

that putting myself too much into the story? "

 

" That's your lead, " I told him. I doubt that anyone on the New York

Times news desk ever got such a call from a reporter in the field. . .

 

Not long ago, I saw Rupert Murdoch at a book party for Judge Andrew

Napolitano of Fox News at its New York studios. I reminded Murdoch that

I'd once worked for him. He groaned and said, without missing a beat,

" Oh, the Voice, the bane of my existence! "

 

During his regime here, the Voice was, to my knowledge, the only one of

his properties that openly and directly criticized him from time to

time. At one point, he was so furious at one of our columnists,

Alexander Cockburn, that he called the then editor in chief, David

Schneiderman, and ordered him to fire Cockburn. Schneiderman did not.

Murdoch called him again and threatened, " If you don't fire him, I'll

sell the Voice to someone worse than I am! " Schneiderman took the

chance.

 

That was, and is, the spirit of the Voice. And that's why I've stayed

here all these years.

 

http://villagevoice.com/specials/0543,50thehent,69254,31.html