By: E&P Staff After months of speculation, New Times Media and Village Voice Media announced on Monday an agreement to merge. The new company will be called Village Voice Media and will publish free weekly newspapers and Web sites in 17 of the nation's largest markets. Pending federal regulatory approval, the deal is expected to be completed by early 2006.
New Times Chief Executive Officer Jim Larkin will be CEO of the new company, and New Times Executive Editor Michael Lacey will be executive editor of the combined operation. Village Voice CEO David Schneiderman will be president of Village Voice Digital.
There was no cash traded for the transaction; instead, New Times will receive 5 seats on the board and the Village Voice will receive 4. The investment firms involved in Village Voice Media will retain board seats. Additionally, the deal specifics that union contracts at the Village Voice will be honored.
There has been some concern that the merger will make the papers more corporate and more chain-like. ?That's a stretch,? said Schneiderman who adds that the Village Voice was once owned by News Corp.
?These companies do the same thing, so it's a clean fit,? said Schneiderman. He also added that it will strengthen the national footprint and its chances of national ad dollars.
Village Voice Media will have a combined weekly audited circulation of 1.8 million papers and 4.3 million readers weekly when the merger is completed. Village Voice papers will join New Times' national advertising sales agency Ruxton Media Group. Ruxton will represent 35 weekly alternative publications from coast to coast with audited circulations of 3.1 million weekly.
Village Voice Media will have papers and Web sites in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Seattle, St. Louis, Orange County (Calif.), Minneapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Nashville, the East Bay (including Oakland and Berkeley, Calif.), and the Ft. Lauderdale/West Palm Beach, Fla., area.
The merger also will bring VVM online classifieds into New Times' backpage.com, which combines the popularity of free classified online bulletin boards with new revenue opportunities for affiliated papers. The addition of the six Voice papers means backpage.com will be licensed to 37 newspapers in major American markets.
The Village Voice, which now owns five papers in addition to its New York City flagship, was founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, and famed novelist Norman Mailer. The New York paper has received three Pulitzer Prizes, as well as Front Page Awards and Deadline Club Awards, and its daily-updated Web site has twice been recognized as one of the nation's premier online sites, receiving the National Press Foundation's Online Journalism Award and the Editor & Publisher Eppy Award for best U.S. weekly newspaper online.
New Times, which has grown to become the nation's largest publisher of alternative weeklies with 11 newspapers, was founded in 1970 by Lacey and others at Arizona State University. Its papers have routinely bested the nation's leading dailies in national and regional writing contests, winning awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the George Polk Awards, and many others. In particular, the chain has posted multiple winners and national finalists in the Livingston Awards, the nation's top contest recognizing journalistic excellence from younger writers.
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