New Whole Foods to Open Up Exactly Where it is Needed Least
The Weekly Feed: Experimentation Edition
Morning Roundup: Change Edition
Former Blade Staffers Launch 'DC Agenda'
D.C. Unemployment Rate Reaches 11.9 Percent
New York hedge fund Atalaya Capital Management were the winners in a bankruptcy auction in Tampa today to see who would control the Creative Loafing newspaper chain, owners of the Washington City Paper and other alternative weeklies, reports the St. Petersburg Times. Atalaya was Creative Loafing's largest creditor by far, and they took control of the company by significantly outbidding a partnership made up of now former Loafing CEO Ben Eason and another hedge fund creditor, BIA Digital Partners. Atalaya offered $5 million, while the Eason group opened with $2.32 million.
Today's decision removes some of the long-standing uncertainty for the City Paper newsroom, which has seen several rounds of layoffs over the last few years since Creative Loafing bought the publication, as well as a restructuring toward an emphasis on web publishing. Creative Loafing will no longer be burdened by its crushing debt load, which is a clear positive, said City Paper Editor-in-Chief Erik Wemple. But that doesn't mean everything is suddenly hunky-dory for the alt-weekly.
"There's no real whoops and hollers of joy around here, simply because there's a great deal that's unknown," Wemple said. "A change of ownership doesn't mean that all of a sudden newspapering is a different environment."
Wemple said representatives from Atalaya were planning an on-site visit to the newspaper's Adams Morgan offices in the coming weeks.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
best of luck to the folks at city paper. whatever your opinion of them, we certainly need good journalists to tell the stories that make our city unique.
So what you're saying is that under new ownership, there's a chance the City Paper might actually hire, um, "good journalists"?
snark, snark, snarky-snark.
seriously, tell me that mike debonis, jason cherkis, and darrow montgomery don't produce.
Sure, those four produce, but there are probably a half dozen more who should go back to writing for their high school papers.
And Wemple needs to bow out.
Good to see CP solvent gain. And this time around, I hopefully won't get mentioned in any future bankruptcy proceedings.
Dude, what did you do to them to piss them off that badly?
I think that their request is a violation of your Constitutional right to freedom of speech (and to fling monkey dung at tourists in jorts).
oh wow, they are still around...good to hear, haven't read them in years.
Craigs List killed the City Paper. Its biggest draw were the sex ads in the back. They used to run 20 pages or more. Now, just a few.
There was a time when if you didn't pick up a copy by 6pm on Thursday, you were shut out. Now, you can find stacks of papers throughout the city.
A sad state of affairs for the paper that launched the career of ABC News White House Correspondent Jake Tapper.
There were layoffs? You mean people get paid to write CP stories?
Wasn't there a slutty girl on the last Real World named Atalaya? Double teamed by two dudes in a hot tub, I believe. Great gal though.
Seriously though, they need to up their Barry coverage. Three cover stories a month? Not nearly enough.