Fresh Loaf

Richard Eldredge tweets that the Southern Voice and David, Atlanta’s leading gay publications, have been shut down. Eldredge says staffers came to work today to find the locks changed.

In February, the NYC-based Gay City News reported that the Avalon Equity Fund, a parent company majority shareholder in SoVo, Washington Blade and several other gay publications’ parent company Unite Media, had been forced into liquidation and faced federal receivership. People familiar with the matter recently told CL they were unaware of the company’s fate. (Project Q Atlanta’s been following the story closely.)

UPDATE: “We had been told that essentially we’d be sold down the road,” SoVo Editor Laura Douglas-Brown tells CL. “We had no inclination it’d be this morning. Everyone’s in shock right now.”

SoVo News Editor Dyana Bagby tells CL that a news budget had been prepared for this week’s issue. She covered two events this weekend and was going to write up articles for the publication.

“The thing to keep in mind is that this is not just Southern Voice,” Douglas-Brown says. “This is also the Washington Blade, which has been the gay paper of record for our country for the last 40 years. And David Magazine and the paper in Fort Lauderdale. It’s not just a loss for the employees, but the gay community as well.”

Since its founding nearly 21 years ago, SoVo has been the strongest voice covering Atlanta’s gay community. Bagby, a dogged reporter who offered clear and concise reporting of the recent Atlanta Eagle raid and other LGBT issues, helped bolster SoVo’s online presence. Staff Writer Matt Schafer could commonly be found in the Gold Dome press box covering policy decisions in a state that, by and large, hasn’t exactly been friendly to gay rights. Douglas-Brown says the paper employed approximately 20 people.

“No one was in it just for the job,” Douglas-Brown says. “Everybody was in it for the cause too, in their own ways. People have put up with a lot difficulties over the past year, and have hung in there because they cared. It’s tragic and I’m desperately sorry it ended this way, especially for the people who’ve worked so hard.

She continues: “[The closure] didn’t happen because of a lack of need for our publications. It didn’t happen because of a lack of hard dedicated work by local staff. And that’s the shame of it…It’s a sad tale, how it all came crashing down.”

UPDATE: Project Q Atlanta posts a photo of the one-page announcement that greeted the publications’ staffers.

The text reads:

It is with GREAT regret that we must inform you that effective immediately, the operations of Window Media, LLC and Unite Media, LLC have closed down.

Please return to this office on WEDNESDAY, November 18th, 2009 at 11:00 AM to collect personal belongings and to receive information on your separation stipulations. Please bring boxes and/or containers that will allow you to collect all your personal belongings at one time.

Regretfully,

Steve Myers
Mike Kitchens

Myers is the publisher. Kitchens, Project Q reports, is a longtime Window Media executive. We’re trying to touch base with Unite Media and Window Media. More to come.

UPDATE: Erik Wemple of the Washington City Paper, CL’s sister publication, reports that  Washington Blade staffers will launch a new publication, minus the debt load of its former parent company.

UPDATE: Kristi Swartz of the AJC offers a thorough rundown of Window Media’s financial woes, including quotes from former SoVo staffers about the closure.

Bookmark It

Our colleague Wayne Garcia at CL’s sister paper in Tampa reports:

And it will be on Aug. 25, during a hearing in downtown Tampa that will start at 10 a.m. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano today approved a disclosure statement for Creative Loafing’s reorganization plan after a week of intensive talks between the chain’s owners, in the form of company CEO Ben Eason, and its largest creditor, Atalaya Capital Management LP.

Atalaya is the investment fund that was owed $31 million from financing CL’s 2007 pay-down of debt and purchase of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper. As part of the negotiations, Atalaya has agreed to write-down its promissory note to $12 million, which would be repaid at 8 percent interest-only for five years and balloon due at that point.

According to the terms of the reorganization plan and promises made in court today, all CL creditors would be paid in full with two exceptions: Atalaya and BIA Digital Partners, which provided additional lending in the 2007 deals. BIA is now part of an Eason-led equity group that will bid for ownership against Atalaya.

…

“We are on board and supportive of moving forward under this process,” Atalaya’s lawyer, Tyler Brown, told the judge via telephone during the noon hearing.

That means that Atalaya is supporting the reorganization plan and auction process. It remains, however, interested in owning the nation’s second-largest [alternative] newspaper chain and has put in what is called a “stalking horse offer” of $2 million that will be the first bid up during the Aug. 25 equity auction, at which anybody can essentially bid to own the post-bankruptcy Creative Loafing.

Continue reading “Bankruptcy judge sets auction date for ownership of Creative Loafing alt-weekly chain” …

Bookmark It

Paste magazine, the Decatur-based music mag that’s reaching out for help during a crushing advertising downturn, says it’s reached the halfway point in its campaign.

From the magazine:

When we launched the campaign, we had no idea what to expect. We knew some readers had offered to help, but we braced for the worst. The response has been phenomenal. Readers, press and even advertisers showed remarkable support. We’ve been amazed, humbled and inspired.

So far we have raised $148,000! That was the minimum that we needed to keep us going into the summer; we never expected to hit this goal so quickly. Thank you! We have the most amazing readers in the world, and we now know—in a very real way—that we hold this thing called Paste in trust for you and will work diligently to honor that.

We still have a ways to go. Most of our debt will be paid out of revenues when the economy starts to rebound and advertisers return, but we need $300,000 to take care of bills that spiraled up during the ad slump. We’re halfway to that goal and more confident than ever that Paste will make it.

If you’re one of the thousands that have donated, you have our deepest gratitude. This crazy campaign is working. If you haven’t donated solely because you thought the effort was futile, it is not. And just check out those amazing songs that are yours for whatever you want to donate.

More musicians — including Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, Neko Case, Cee Lo Green — have been added to the Paste Station Download Vault, a 120-song repository available to contributors. There are also contest prizes, such as tickets to the Austin City Limits Festival and “an entire Of Montreal Skeletal Lamping Collection.” For more information about the magazine or to contribute to the effort, visit Paste magazine.

The full release from Paste follows after the jump.

(more…)

Bookmark It

This morning’s announcement that the AJC is offering a third round of buyouts came as something of a relief to many among the paper’s beleaguered editorial staff. There’s only so long you can show up for work not knowing if you’re going to be canned that day before you start feeling a little stressed.

Senior writers and editors who were already convinced there was a pink sheet with their name on it are, we’re told, generally pleased to find out they’ve got another chance to get out with a decent severance package. In fact, some employees have already handed in their completed buyout applications and are waiting to be told when is their last day on the job.

The deal on the table is the same as last time: two week’s pay for every year of employment. But the number of bodies to be cleared out is higher than past downsizings. The stated goal is to cut the editorial payroll – currently 323 positions – by about 90. But we’re told that’s an estimate based on the total salary dollars the honchos are looking to save. That figure hasn’t been released.

(more…)

Bookmark It

After weeks of rumors, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this morning announced that it plans to cut 30 percent of its full-time newsroom staff. It will be the third and largest round of job cuts  since 2007 to hit metro Atlanta’s largest daily newspaper. Effective April 26, the AJC will also stop distribution to seven outlying counties, reducing its total distribution area to 20 counties in the metro region.

From a staff report:

The AJC’s news staff will drop to about 230 full-time positions, down from about 323 currently. Staff members with five or more years with the company will be offered voluntary buyouts, with layoffs to follow if fewer than about 90 apply, the company said.

Most of the news staff cuts “will be in production and management, allowing us to keep as many news reporters as possible,” AJC and ajc.com editor Julia Wallace said.

The cuts are expected to be completed in May.

The company laid off 48 part-time news staffers Tuesday and announced the full-time cuts Wednesday morning.

In 2006, full-time newsroom staff numbered about 500.

(UPDATE): Rumored counties dropped from distribution: Barrow, Bibb, Clarke, Houston, Monroe, Oconee, Putnam.

More to come.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

Bookmark It

Wayne Garcia, political editor of CL’s Tampa paper, writes that the judge in the company’s bankruptcy court case has asked the sides to deliver closing arguments in writing. She will review the details and deliver a decision in an as-yet unscheduled conference call.

Don’t wait up for a decision in our Tampa bankruptcy court hearing today; Judge Caryl Delano said early this evening that she did not plan on ruling immediately on whether lender Atalaya Capital Management should be allowed to declare Creative Loafing in default of its $31 million in loans and take over the alt-weekly chain.

Testimony was continuing into the evening in the hearing. Creative Loafing’s valuation expert, Michael Mard of Tampa’s Financial Valuation Group of Florida, testified through all of Tuesday afternoon about his assessment that the chain absorbed most of its losses and revenue declines before its Sept. 29, 2008, Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. He put the value of the company at $7 million on Sept. 30; $12 million on Dec. 31, 2008; and $13 million by February of this year.

Read the rest of Garcia’s update here.

Bookmark It

New York Times media columnist David Carr had an eye-opening article yesterday about TriCityNews, an Asbury Park, N.J. altweekly with a circulation of 10,000, a skeleton-crew staff, and an enviable profit margin at a time when newspapers — and magazines, as well — are seeing layoffs, dwindling revenues and bankruptcies. (Carr mentions Creative Loafing Inc. in the article.)

How’d Dan Jacobson, the paper’s publisher and owner, do it? In what would seem a suicidal move, he invested his energy and focus into the print “product” and saw it become an item readers clamored to pick up.  He set advertising rates 10 years ago and maintained them, and in the process, developed a loyal list of clients. Most importantly, he says, he ignored the publishing pack’s rush to gain an online presence and completely ignored the web. (Look at the paper’s website.) It appears — in this case, at least — there’s something to be said about safeguarding your content.

(more…)

Bookmark It

Ben Eason

Wayne Garcia, our colleague at CL’s Tampa paper, attended today’s hearing about Creative Loafing Inc.’s bankruptcy protection proceedings.

Garcia reports:

Current Creative Loafing CEO and Chairman Ben Eason won a partial victory in federal bankruptcy court in Tampa today as Judge Caryl E. Delano refused to grant a motion by lender Atalaya to give it ownership of the company.

At a preliminary hearing this afternoon, Delano ruled that Creative Loafing’s reorganization plan should move forward and that it is too early to say that it can’t work. If it were nine months or more into the bankruptcy, Delano said from the bench, such a motion would be worth pursuing. “We’re three months into the case. I think the debtor should be provided a reasonable opportunity…. This case has been on a short string,” Delano told the parties in court. “The debtor has complied with those timetables” in producing a preliminary reorganization plan.

Garcia reports the judge scheduled an evidentiary hearing for Jan. 21. A hearing to review the proposed reorganization plan has also been scheduled for Jan. 26. Read more at Garcia’s blog.

(Photo by Jim Stawniak)

Bookmark It

Cox Newspapers, a subsidiary of Cox Communications and owner of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says it will shut down its national and international news bureau in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2009.

A company memo posted on Romenesko says the AJC and Dayton Daily News will “manage their own Washington and international newsgathering independently following the national bureau’s closing through dedicated correspondents in D.C.” Eligible employees of the D.C. bureau will be offered “generous” severance packages and continued employment until March 31. Bureau chief Andy Alexander will retire at the end of the year.

“The Washington news bureau and its chief, Andy Alexander, have an impressive and storied history in Washington and in our company,” Sandy Schwartz, Cox Newspapers president, said in the memo. “For more than 30 years, the reporters of this bureau have broken an untold number of stories that have had an impact on the lives of our readers in cities and towns all across the U.S. The Cox Washington bureau has won or shared virtually every major American journalism award, including the Pulitzer Prize.”

After the jump, read the entire memo. It includes details about Alexander’s career — it’s been an impressive one — and information about the international bureau.

(more…)

Bookmark It

Word is going around that something big will go down at the AJC next week – and nobody expects it to be a good something.

Cox honchos have spent recent weeks prepping the staff to brace for more cost-cutting at the paper. In late June, following a brutal round of layoffs at the Cox-owned Palm Beach Post in which a third(!) of the news staff was let go, AJC Publisher John Mellott issued a memo that offered little comfort:

“The economic factors affecting our business have worsened. The recession, the housing market downturn, as well as soaring newsprint and fuel costs have increased the urgency to reduce expenses. We will do so aggressively and in ways that make most sense for our market, our readers and our advertisers.”

It looks like the shit hits the fan next week. Managers have asked vacationing employees to provide contact information so they can be notified at the same time as the drudges in the newsroom. Everyone is expecting a bombshell to drop next week, but no one we spoke to seems to know whether it’ll be a SCUD missile, a neutron bomb or a Doomsday Machine.

(more…)

Bookmark It