Mediagazer: Village Voice Media Execs Acquire The Company's Famed Alt Weeklies, Form New Holding Company (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)

9:15 AM ET, September 24, 2012

Top News:

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Village Voice Media Execs Acquire The Company's Famed Alt Weeklies, Form New Holding Company — A group of long-running alternative weekly newspapers is changing hands. Village Voice Media Holdings — whose titles include the LA Weekly, Westword, and, yes, the Village Voice …

Discussion: Street Fight, NetNewsCheck Latest, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Forbes, The Latest Word, Arizona Republic, Navel Gazing, Village Voice and Guardian

Mallory Russell / AdAge:

Village Voice Management Buyout Leaves Backpage.com Behind — The Move Rids Management of a Headache, Takes Away Leverage for Critics — A group of Village Voice Media's senior managers has agreed to buy from its current ownership the print publications and digital properties — with the notable exclusion of Backpage.com.

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent: Village Voice spins off Backpage.com

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Guardian's chief investigator wants ISP tax to fund journalism — His reporting has helped expose arms payments by BAE, secret US government cable messages and lately has focused on News Corporation. Now The Guardian's influential investigations editor and assistant editor is mooting …

Discussion: Guardian, Media Week, The Wall Blog, on, @brokenbottleboy, @benedictevans, @willardfoxton and @brokenbottleboy

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

A broadband levy to fund journalism? Now that's a very clever idea — Has David Leigh cracked it? We have been puzzling for years about how to subsidise journalism once it makes the final transition from print to net (see here and here and here). One obvious model is the funding of the BBC through its licence fee.

Discussion: AndyDickinson.net

Paul Carr / PandoDaily:
Taxing Broadband to Save Journalism is One Big, Stupid Idea. We Need a Thousand Small, Smart Ones

Discussion: Forbes and Charlie Beckett

David Carr / New York Times:

Atlantic Covering Business World With Digital Quartz Site — Business titans are generally not prone to self-appraisal, and when they do take stock, it usually begins and ends with a list of their conquests. — David G. Bradley, the owner of Atlantic Media, has never been like that.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Quartz Shoots for Tablet and Mobile Readers, but Doesn't Arm Itself With an App

Discussion: Talking Biz News

C.W. Anderson / Nieman Journalism Lab: What happens when news organizations move from “beats” to “obsessions”?

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Homicide Watch DC wins Online Journalism Award for public service — Crime reporting site Homicide Watch DC, which recently crowdfunded more than $40,000 to secure its survival through the creation of a student reporting lab, was named as one of the winners of the Online Journalism Awards at the weekend.

Discussion: Big News Network.com and NetNewsCheck Latest

Sherrina V. Navani / The Trentonian:

The Trentonian unveils Homicide Watch — TRENTON — Fifteen people have been killed in the capital city this year, and starting today The Trentonian will be bringing you a new way to look at those killings and the lives that have been lost. “There have been over 100 shots fired in the city so far …

Discussion: Digital First Media

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

State Dept. Blasts CNN For Using Dead Ambassador's Journal — NEW YORK — The State Department blasted CNN Saturday night for the network's handling of a personal journal belonging to late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, which was removed from the site of the deadly Sept. 11 consulate attack.

Discussion: Guardian, BuzzFeed, New York Times, The Atlantic Wire, Erik Wemple, Gawker, Mediaite, nation.foxnews.com and All Things CNN

Reuters:

Iran readies domestic Internet system, blocks Google — (Reuters) - Iran plans to switch its citizens onto a domestic Internet network in what officials say is a bid to improve cyber security but which many Iranians fear is the latest way to control their access to the web.

Discussion: Guardian, TechCrunch, ZDNet, The Verge, Engadget and AllThingsD

Mona Zhang / FishbowlNY:

Patch Launches A More Social, More Mobile Site — In recent months, there's been much talk of the booming New York tech scene. The city has the fastest growing tech sector in the nation, helped along by Mayor Bloomberg's pitch to entrepreneurs and his Made in NY Digital Map.

Discussion: Poynter, paidContent, 10,000 Words and Street Fight

Charles Arthur / Guardian:

The Kernel faces legal action by two more former contributors — Two more former contributors intend to sue the Kernel, the London-based startup blog, claiming it owes them thousands of pounds. This follows moves by two other former Kernel contributors who are seeking to take parent company Sentinel Media …

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Exit interview: Brisbane says New York Times Public Editor job is ‘not a conversation’ — Arthur Brisbane's New York Times email address has been shut off, and he sounds pretty happy about it. — “I'm trying to decompress,” he told me two days after his stint as the fourth public editor of The New York Times came to an end.