Corporation shuts down alternative newspaper
By The Associated Press
10.14.02
CLEVELAND — In the end, an alternative weekly that for 10 years railed against the city's power brokers was dismantled by the corporation that owned it.
New York-based Village Voice Media closed its Cleveland Free Times last week in a deal with the Phoenix-based company New Times, which in turn discontinued New Times Los Angeles. The deal allowed the newspaper chains to cede territory to each other and end competition between their independent dailies in the two cities.
It has left the Free Times' former staffers wondering what's happened to the country's independent newspapers.
"It just shows that alternative media is now a part of big media business," said David Eden, former Free Times editor in chief. "Where is the alternative press going to be? Because it's not this anymore."
Of the 118 alternative newspapers that are members of Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, more than half are still independently owned, said Richard Karpel, the association's executive director.
He said the papers operated by Village Voice Media and the New Times company still have an independent voice even though they are owned by a group of investors.
"They're still small companies compared to the AOL-Time Warners of the world," Karpel said. He said the only thing that could threaten the voice of alternative newspapers would be if they were bought up by a corporate giant.
"What's important is that we don't have a single large public company own a big percentage of the papers in our business. That's the danger," Karpel said. "It's not that it can't be done, I just think it would change the character of our papers."
Eden said the transformation of New York's Village Voice from a stand-alone alternative newspaper to a corporation with a chain of papers has already changed it.
"It's a corporation like anyone else," he said. "It's an excellent alternative newspaper, but it doesn't symbolize what it used to."
Messages seeking comment were left for David Schneiderman, chief executive officer of Village Voice Media, and Michael Lacey, executive editor of New Times.
Eden, who had been with Free Times only 6 1/2 months, did not question Village Voice Media's move from a business standpoint.
"They were offered a great baseball trade, so they sacrificed Cleveland to get Los Angeles," Eden said. "It's a great business move. It's a tragic move for independent journalism in Cleveland."
The deal leaves Scene as the city's only alternative newspaper.
"Obviously, it's better for us. We already grew by 25 pages the first week," Scene editor Pete Kotz said. "I think we'll be a much better paper because we'll have more resources."
John Carroll University journalism professor Richard Hendrickson said the Free Times was a strong voice of dissent on politics and social issues in Cleveland and that its loss will hurt the community.
"Alternative papers are doing more investigative reporting than some of the daily newspapers seem to be doing," he said. "They are scrappy and have a lot of young reporters that want to make a name for themselves.
"There are drawbacks in terms of accuracy and the quality of it because there are fewer constraints on the writers."
Longtime Free Times columnist Roldo Baltimole said that after working for The Plain Dealer and The Wall Street Journal in the late 1960s he realized mainstream newspapers would not accept his views.
So Baltimole started "Point of View," a self-produced publication that at its peak had 1,700 subscribers.
"The old axiom that 'The one who owns the press has freedom of the press' is really true," he said. "I knew I could say what I wanted if I was paying the bill."
He continued his liberal criticisms of city issues, such as the public funding of professional sports stadiums, with the Free Times, writing a weekly "Point of View" column.
He said he would like to continue to have a voice in the city, but at age 69 is no longer able to produce his own newsletter. "When you kill a newspaper, you kill a voice, especially when it's a newspaper that gives a different view from the conventional wisdom," he said.