Village Voice Media
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Village Voice Media is a privately held corporation that owns the Village Voice, the nation's oldest (founded in 1955) and largest alternative weekly newspaper, as well as LA Weekly, OC Weekly in Orange County, California, Seattle Weekly, City Pages in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville Scene, Cleveland Scene, Dallas Observer, Westword in Denver, East Bay Express in Oakland, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Houston Press, The Pitch in Kansas City, Miami New Times, Phoenix New Times, SF Weekly in San Francisco, and Riverfront Times in St. Louis.
In 2002, the previous Village Voice Media entered into a noncompetition agreement with New Times Media, another national publisher of alternative weeklies, whereby the two companies agreed to stop publishing New Times LA (a product of New Times Media) and Cleveland Free Times (a product of Village Voice Media), so that the companies would not publish two, competing newspapers in any single city. This agreement and phasing out of the two newspapers, led to an antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The investigation resulted in a settlement, requiring the companies to sell off assets and the old newspapers' titles to any potential competitors.[1]
On October 24, 2005, New Times Media announced a deal to acquire Village Voice Media (which, at the date of sale, owned the first 7 papers mentioned in the first paragraph), creating a chain of 17 free weekly newspapers around the country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million and controlling a quarter of the weekly circulation of alternative weekly newspapers in North America. After the deal's completion, New Times took the Village Voice Media name.
