Village Voice Media CEO Schneiderman's memo re folding of alt-weeklies

Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 06:49:55 -0700
Subject: Important Announcement from David Schneiderman

To: All Staff
From: David Schneiderman

We have just completed a very significant transaction with New Times. As a result, New Times is ceasing publication of New Times Los Angeles and Village Voice Media is ceasing publication of Cleveland Free Times.

I am very sorry that we will be closing Free Times. It is a well-written, feisty and respected newspaper in the Cleveland community that has been locked in a very competitive battle for some years in which neither side was able to gain the upper hand. It was never our intention to give up that fight, but when the opportunity arose to consolidate and strengthen our position in LA, it was my judgment that the deal was just too attractive to pass up. New Times has assured me that they will be interviewing much of the Free Times staff for positions on their Cleveland paper.

This transaction is consistent with the strategic direction of the company. We feel strongly about the markets we are in and will continue to grow the company, both internally and through acquisitions.

Born of the of the 1960s' protest politics, America's alternative press is increasingly a youth-oriented appendage of the entertainment media with a lucrative foot in the sex trade's advertising. Across the country, alternative weeklies essentially have been concentrated into two chains:

New York-based Village Voice Media surrounds its lifestyle and entertainment reporting with a thinning veneer of earnestly reported progressive journalism focused mainly on local politics, civil rights, feminism and the labor movement.

The larger chain, Phoenix-based New Times, wraps its entertainment coverage in a kind of mouthy contrarian journalism with an infusion of populist and libertarian attitudes and occasional investigations.

But, month by month, the news focus of most publications in both chains takes on a softer and softer hue.

So, now that Village Voice Media's LA Weekly has cornered Southern California's alternative press niche by paying New Times to close its Los Angeles paper, what does the chain's management intend?

"First of all," said Voice Chief Executive David Schneiderman, "we'll be trying to absorb as many of New Times' advertising dollars as we can get." In fact, by late morning Wednesday--the day New Times Los Angeles closed down--telephone calls to the shuttered papers' advertising number were being automatically forwarded to the Weekly.

According to Schneiderman, the decision to buy its rival out of the Los Angeles market also was driven, in part, by an anxiety over the long-term intentions of Chicago-based Tribune Co., which publishes The Times.

In an interview Wednesday, Schneiderman pointed to what he said was Tribune's interest in establishing an entertainment-oriented Chicago publication designed to appeal to the young readers habitually drawn to free alternative weeklies. If that strategy were to be extended to Los Angeles, Schneiderman said, it would threaten the Weekly's lucrative local franchise, which sources say produces profit of more than 20%. (As a privately held company, Village Voice Media does not publish such figures).

"In Southern California," Schneiderman said, "we intend to compete with the Los Angeles Times because, if we don't, we think Tribune will come in and compete with us for our young readers. The Times is a journalistic behemoth with lots of advertising dollars. But we have a desirable young readership, and we think this deal positions us to get some of that money."