Comments on: The Great West Coast Newspaper War

The Great West Coast Newspaper War

Artw — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:10:57 -0800

The alt-weekly newspaper war in San Francisco - The titanic struggle between The Bay Guardian and SF Weekly (owned by Village Voice Media), as told by Eli Sanders of Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:21:49 -0800

Print Ragnarök

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:22:48 -0800

This quote from the article sums it up: "They really are fighting over something that is a dead issue now. Because the model of journalism that these guys are fighting over is in deep trouble. They really are the last two tyrant-osaurs, long after the asteroid hit the planet." What are the chances that either of these companies are still in print five years from now?

By: dw

dw — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:26:23 -0800

And it should be noted that The Stranger isn't exactly an unbiased narrator.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:29:54 -0800

While we're on the topic of origins and connections between weeklies, this is a good place to point out some things about The Stranger, founded in 1991 in Seattle by Tim Keck, who had moved to the city from Wisconsin after cofounding and then selling his stake in the Onion. The alt-weekly world, for all its growth over the years, remains relatively small. The Stranger's editorial director, Dan Savage, writes a weekly syndicated sex column that now runs in every VVM paper except Seattle Weekly, which is The Stranger's direct competitor; The Stranger gets national advertising through a relationship with a national advertising group called Voice Media Group, which is owned by VVM; The Stranger's ownership structure, like VVM's, makes use of LLC protections (though it has only one LLC in its ownership structure, many fewer than VVM possesses); like the Bay Guardian, The Stranger has minority owners, though none associated with the Church of Satan as far as we know; some Stranger employees used to work for Seattle Weekly, though not me; and The Stranger's owners operate one other weekly newspaper, the Portland Mercury, making them arguably the owners of a chain of alt-weeklies, if two links can be considered a chain.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:34:23 -0800

Both of these rags are incredibly tedious and have been for years. But they still get attention, and when politicians run for election in SF, they either court these papers or make a public display of how assiduously they are not going to court them. So I wouldn't be surprised if they're still around 5 years from now, squawking irrelevantly and littering Market Street.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:44:42 -0800

VVM is also invested in blogs like topless robot, so even with print fading I'd expect them to be around in a Gawker like capacity for some time.

By: warbaby

warbaby — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:56:34 -0800

the model for the newspaper industry has been "run in red ink until you are the last one standing and then rule a local monopoly." the size of the town or the size of the paper doesn't seem to have much influence on how the game is played. and the last act in this drama usually boils down to a quiet folding or a bloody legal battle (sometimes both at once.) The end result is a single-paper town where the advertisers become rate payers of a natural monopoly utility rather than customers in a market. And the media gets owned by a combination of advertisers like real estate, grocery stores and car dealers (which is the typical small city advertising market.) Or in the case of alternative weeklys, the local food and entertainment biz.

By: clyde

clyde — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:34:55 -0800

nobody here who matters is reading the weekly. move along.

By: griphus

griphus — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:37:44 -0800

Or in the case of alternative weeklys, the local food and entertainment biz. You forgot the gratuitous and quasi-pornographic escort ads. Display-stuff a purse you eventually sell to a 12-year-old with a Village Voice once and you will never forget this fact.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:44:03 -0800

It's a measure of how bad San Francisco journalism has gotten that the "newspaper war" is between two free prostitute-ad-funded rags that, at best, write two original articles a week.

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:46:57 -0800

On one side there's Michael G. Lacey, 61, the executive editor and a co-owner of Village Voice Media, a self-described "prick". I worked for VVM for years. I once had a meeting (in San Francisco, in fact) with Lacey and a lot of other people at my level in the chain which ended with Lacey saying, and I quote, "and if you can't do it, I'll fire your ass." So, yeah. And I still have a lot of friends in the chain, most of whom have had their salaries cut or capped and are now doing double duty, putting out a paper and blogging at the same time. Blogging on the deck of the Titanic.

By: enn

enn — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:59:40 -0800

prostitute-ad-funded rags Every daily newspaper in the country was funded until the last two years by inch-thick real estate advertising supplements and it just so happened that their business sections missed a wild overvaluation of real estate obvious to even the dimmer small children out there. I'll take the hooker ads, thanks.

By: warbaby

warbaby — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:57:17 -0800

griphus: that's entertainment

By: Nelson

Nelson — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:17:58 -0800

I'll take the hooker ads, thanks. It's another measure of how bad journalism has gotten that the prostitute-ad-funded papers seem more reputable now than the real-estate-ad-funded papers.

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:34:15 -0800

I guess I just don't see the big deal about being prostitute-funded (although Thursday, when they came in to pay for their ad, was always an interesting day at my old paper). A conflict of interest when investigating fat-cat pimps? Burying stories about the condom-industrial complex? I promise you that restaurant ads in the food section lead to more journalistic problems than the call girl ads.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:50:09 -0800

It's another measure of how bad journalism has gotten that the prostitute-ad-funded papers seem more reputable now than the real-estate-ad-funded papers. It's less that their journalism is bad, so much as increasingly irrelevant on the level of Pravda. Those prostie-ad-funded papers actually do local coverage of local matters. Something that reputable AP-excerpt-reprinting newspapers don't do much of anymore, due to consolidations and budget cutbacks.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:51:29 -0800

Pravda is where I get all my Siberian big-foot news!

By: spacely_sprocket

spacely_sprocket — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:49:59 -0800

There are a great number of words that I could expend on this topic, but I think I'll just say that I know and like Bruce Brugmann, and I wish him well.

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:51:21 -0800

... that was a pretty interesting read.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:08:43 -0800

Wow, looking at related posts Craigslist doomed Bay Area print media FIVE YEARS AGO.

By: effugas

effugas — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 02:49:52 -0800

I don't understand Alt weeklies. Really. I don't. I see these things, and they're like 15 pages of content, and 90 pages of ads. Ads for music, food, girls, whatever. It's just ad density, vastly beyond anything even the worst pop up ad generator could assemble. I just don't get why this is interesting to anyone.

By: granted

granted — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:35:09 -0800

Tedious and irrelevent they may be, but at least both the Weekly and the Bay-Guardian are better than the Examiner, the pigeon of alt-newspapers: aggressive, stupid, and relentlessly littering the city with its droppings.

By: internet fraud detective squad, station number 9

internet fraud detective squad, station number 9 — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:50:36 -0800

effugas: "Really. I don't. I see these things, and they're like 15 pages of content, and 90 pages of ads. Ads for music, food, girls, whatever. It's just ad density, vastly beyond anything even the worst pop up ad generator could assemble." You are misunderstimating how cool music, food, and girls are