L.A. Weekly is up for sale. Voice Media Group, owner of the Weekly, has decided to spin off the publication. Neither a timeline nor asking price have publicly been announced just yet, but either way, it seems plausible that the paper will continue more or less as it is, at least in the short term, just under new management.
“We expect to see a great level of interest in the Weekly,” the CEO of Voice Media Group, Scott Tobias, said in a statement published by L.A. Weekly itself.
The statement also asserts that L.A. Weekly is profitable and the most-read alternative weekly paper in the country. The journalism that appears in its pages has picked up local and national awards, including when, in 2007, thanks to Jonathan Gold, it became the first newspaper to ever win a Pulitzer Prize for food criticism.
So why this move? It seems that a sale has been in the works since at least 2015, when the parent company adopted a long-term diversification plan orchestrated by Dirks, Van Essen and Murray, a firm specializing in newspaper industry mergers and acquisitions, Editor and Publisher reports.
Voice Media Group has previously owned—and, in recent years, sold off—other local weeklies, including O.C. Weekly, S.F. Weekly, Seattle Weekly and even the company’s own namesake, The Village Voice. Once the L.A. Weekly sale happens, VMG will continue to own Dallas Observer, Miami New Times, Houston Press and a small group of other newspapers, at least for now.
L.A. Weekly has been publishing since its founding in 1978. In 1996, it was acquired by New Times Media, which changed names to Voice Media Group in 2005.
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