The merger of Village Voice and New Times raises various questions for those in the industry, beyond simply issues of classified advertising. Will the new giant among the alternatives bring advantages in terms of economies of scale in newsprint, writer features and even employee benefits? Will the company be able to more easily attract large national advertisers? On the content side, will the individual, community-based appeal of alternative weeklies be damaged by larger, more corporate management?

What does appear clear is that the merger binge that has hit the mainstream newspaper field is now clearly a reality in the world of alternative weeklies. Consider the markets the new company will hold, assuming the merger is approved.

Village Voice

Publication	City	Circulation
City Pages (Twin Cities) [1]	Minneapolis , MN	117,577
L.A. Weekly [2]	Los Angeles , CA	210,045
Nashville Scene [3]	Nashville , TN	51,327
OC Weekly [4]	Santa Ana , CA	70,335
Seattle Weekly [5]	Seattle , WA	105,000
Village Voice, The [6]	New York , NY	249,942

New Times

Publication	City	Circulation
Dallas Observer [7]	Dallas , TX	105,060
East Bay Express [8]	Emeryville , CA	85,068
Houston Press [9]	Houston , TX	99,552
Miami New Times [10]	Miami , FL	99,352
New Times Broward-Palm Beach [11]	Ft Lauderdale , FL	69,504
Phoenix New Times [12]	Phoenix , AZ	114,787
Pitch, The [13]	Kansas City , MO	80,000
Riverfront Times [14]	St. Louis , MO	95,415
Scene [15]	Cleveland , OH	80,898
SF Weekly [16]	San Francisco , CA	110,711
Westword [17]	Denver , CO	99,846

All told that would give the new company more than 1.8 million readers and the dominant alternative weekly in 5 of the nation’s 10 largest cities, as well as the biggest weeklies in other large cities like Denver and Miami .¹² [18]

If the merger is successful, it might not be a stretch to expect more like it. Alternative weeklies are still taking economic hits from a variety of sources —commuter tabs, free weeklies launched by mainstream papers and, of course, Craigslist. The savings that a publisher can achieve with a bigger reader base and perhaps more uniform content could be important in what forecasts suggest could be lean years ahead.

The other ownership question hanging in front of the weeklies at the end of 2005 was Craig Newmark, the founder of — Craigslist.com. Newmark has been discussing wading into the world of news content for some time, and it appeared that something concrete was ahead. It wasn’t clear what form any journalism venture would take or how much it would challenge the alternative weeklies directly. Newmark did not reveal much about his plan, but announced that a trial version of his journalism effort would be ready in the spring of 2006.

Summary

The biggest issue on the horizon for the alternative weeklies is the Voice/New Times merger. Despite talk in recent years that the world of the weeklies has been conglomeratized, there is still a lot of room for mergers among the owners that remain.

Beyond the merger, if numbers show that the smaller weekly markets truly are seeing the bigger growth, one can only wonder if the larger weekly publishers will look to purchase publications in smaller cities or if competitors find those markets are big enough for them to push into.

There is also the question of Craig Newmark’s venture. Newmark, who sits on the board of advisers of the Center for Citizen Media being started by “We the Media” author Dan Gillmor, may be looking to expand local blogging in some way. As this report outlines in the Blogs [19] section, that is an area that is sorely lacking in real content at the moment. If Newmark can find a way to make local blogs more useful — even help push them into more regular, serious coverage of local issues — the competitive target won’t be just local dailies, but alternative weeklies. The attitude and opinion in blogs are more typical of the weeklies than the dailies.

All of which may mean that another competitor for alternative weeklies will soon be on the horizon, and this time it won’t just be targeting ads, but content.