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

10:15 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: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Street Fight, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Latest Word, Forbes, Arizona Republic, Navel Gazing, Village Voice and Guardian

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Village Voice spins off Backpage.com — New York's iconic Village Voice and a dozen other weekly newspapers are parting ways with Backpage, a controversial classified site tied to alleged sex trafficking. The split will result in the creation of a new ownership group that is focused solely on news and events.

Discussion: Deadline.com, New York Magazine, New York Post and NYConvergence.com

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.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and voicemediagroup.com

David Carr / New York Times:

Covering the World of Business, Digital Only — 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”?

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

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

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

Discussion: Charlie Beckett and Forbes

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

Discussion: Digital First 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.

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

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Andrew Mitchell ‘pleb’ row: police to investigate Sun leak — Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into how the Sun was leaked the internal report suggesting Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell did call the police “plebs” during an incident at Downing Street.

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 …

Discussion: @willardfoxton, @willardfoxton and @willardfoxton

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, Street Fight and 10,000 Words