The Political Whore

For logistical purposes, CL has been consolidating its multiple blog platforms into one, and now it is The Political Whore’s turn to hang out the “We’re Moving” sign. It makes sense: we can’t use a common search engine among more than one blog right now. And we have to cross-post Green Community posts to both sites, to use just one example of content that fits into both blogs.

This will be the last post in this old blog site (Friday, August 21, 2009). Future PoHo posts will appear in our Daily Loaf blog, which also includes Green Community, arts, entertainment, sports, sex & love, film, TV and other pop culture posts.

You can read PoHo news pretty much the same way you read PoHo now, if you just want news & politics and not the rest of the Daily Loaf fare. Just change your bookmark from http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/

to

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/category/politics/

And the RSS feed changes from http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/feed

to

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/category/politics/feed

See you over at the Daily Loaf.

Nobody emerged with a clear advantage from today’s federal bankruptcy court hearing in Tampa for the post-bankruptcy ownership of Creative Loafing. Judge Caryl E. Delano kept intact a negotiated set of auction rules while saying that she’s waiting until the Aug. 25 equity auction bidding to decide how to define and decide what the “highest and best” offer will be.

While today’s hearing about the rules and procedures for the bidding was given a pretty high-drama buildup in a 1B St. Petersburg Times story and in the Chicago Reader last week, it didn’t live up to its billing and was actually a complex, confusing, and undramatic court session.

Delano approved the negotiated set of bidding rules that was contested for two hours today, but she left some core issues unresolved and said, “I’ll make my ruling as to what the highest and best offer is” on Aug. 25.

If there was real news out of today’s hearing, it was that Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason is considering stepping down temporarily to focus on formulating a new equity bid for the post-bankruptcy company.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m headed over to the Tampa federal courthouse to report on Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano expected ruling after she hears both sides (and maybe more) argue about the rules and procedures for the planned Aug. 25 equity auction that will determine who owns the post-Chapter 11 Creative Loafing alt-newspaper and online news company. Will update once the 11:45 am hearing is over.

In the meantime, you can download the proposed rules and procedures in .pdf.

Michael Miner, the media writer at our sister Chicago Reader, has a good piece with Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason in which the once-and-possible-future owner of the online media and alternative weekly newspaper chain talks about how he plans to win a bankruptcy court equity auction to maintain control of the company.

The difficulty is that the company bidding against him, Atalaya Capital Management, could have deeper pockets. Atalaya loaned Creative Loafing $30 million in 2007 to finance the purchase of the Reader and Washington City Paper and is now owed in the area of $31 million.

Miner’s story picks it up from there:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Monday’s hearing found the normally adversarial Atalaya and CL relationship thawed to some degree.

“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. Read the rest of this entry »

Great article in our Washington City Paper sister pub last week by Andrew Beaujon about how the changes to adult-use ads at Craigslist could affect the alt-newspaper industry.

From the article:

Last year Craigslist, which lists 18 employees on its “about us” page, made somewhere between $20 and $80 million dollars. So why is its CEO, Jim Buckmaster, so p.o.’d about sex ads in alt-weeklies?

Because these bottom-feeding free publications are making an erotic comeback in the classifieds biz, with an assist from law enforcement.

Buckmaster has even taken to the blogosphere to air his frustrations with alt-weekly encroachment. In a recent post, he lists several titles of adult ads he found on backpage.com, a collection of classifieds sites owned by Village Voice Media (VVM). “Cum lay your hotdog on my bun for memorial day” (Dallas); “Let me put you to bed backdoor available $80? (Columbia, S.C.); “An Irish blowjob and a cum showering rainbow” (New York). He links to a screenshot of the last ad, which has photos of a woman performing fellatio.

“It’s worth noting that these ads’ TITLES ALONE contain more explicit content than you will find in all craigslist adult service ads combined,” he writes in the post.

It goes on to say that adult advertising in the Washington alt-weekly has increased since the craigslist change. Read the full ‘Will Craigslist’s New Stance on Adult Ads Save Alt-Weeklies?’

It is an interesting subject given the historical use and reliance on adult-use advertising by publications such as Creative Loafing. It always pits free speech (free love?) advocates against those who have concerns about the objectification of women and the violence that can result.

In our new CLTampa.com, the hottest-growing section seems to be the often explicit Sex & Love articles, to the point where some readers (and CL staffers, in internal discussions and e-mails) have raised questions about the balance between news and erotica/porn/sex coverage. Our publisher and classified ad manager tell me, unlike in Washington, that our adult-use advertising hasn’t seen a bump upward since the change in Craigslist policy.

I never really talk about it much or pimp it to you, but indulge me for a sec: Our News & Politics section page is a great companion to this blog and has lots more headlines, video, Twitter feeds and podcasts than you will find here on any given day.

Here’s how it works:

NEWS HEADLINES: All the important news in Tampa Bay and Florida politics and public affairs that we don’t have time to expand upon with a separate story in PoHo ends up being aggregated into our News & Politics section, with links to the original articles. In other words, I find the news so you don’t have to. Just read the headline and blurb, or click on the link and read the whole thing. Plus, headlines from PoHo posts automatically feed into the News & Politics section, so if you miss checking on PoHo you won’t miss a blog post.

TWITTER FEED: If the word “Tampa” or the hashtag “#cltampa” is in a tweet, it will show up on our Twitter Feed panel. Sort of a cross between micronews and voyeurism.

PODCASTS: Our streaming podcast player for the Political Whore podcast is always on the News & Politics section front, so if you missed an episode and can’t find it in the blog archives you can get it easily.

USER COMMENTS: The most recent three comments on PoHo blog roll up here, no matter which post they were posted on.

CL TV: I scour the best political videos and news bites on YouTube and elsewhere and post them here, so that you can get lost in the joy of streaming video and screw off for another 2-3 hours at work. Wanna see Tom Tancredo call La Raza the Latino equivalent of the KKK? This is the place to do it.

CONTRIBUTORS: Click on each PoHo contributor’s picture to learn more about them and see their latest posts.

If you haven’t checked it out, give it a shot and let me know if you like, dislike or want me to add new features or types of news to it.

Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad name for a law firm, “Welcome to Niemann, Sullivan, Leto & Schweitzer, how may I direct your call?” But back to the job at hand: I have four new contributors to announce. I am excited about the knowledge and qualities they bring to PoHo, including some indepth writing on historic preservation (Leto) and the intersection of religion and public policy (Schweitzer).

Here are their bios, after the jump. I will have some more to announce by the end of this week:

Read the rest of this entry »

Former Creative Loafing reporter and mensch Max Linsky (picture, above, in the good old days in Tampa, moonlighting as a freelance restroom attendant) has an exciting new gig: Managing editor at The Stimulist, an Internet news start-up being headed by MSNBC’s Carlos Watson.

From Business Week:

Another personality who first made a name in traditional media is putting the final touches on an ambitious online destination. Carlos Watson, an MSNBC anchor who also hosts a weekend show on talk radio network Air America, and a small band of staffers are readying The Stimulist, a news and opinion site slated to go live on May 12.

Watson bills The Stimulist as being aimed at what he terms “the change generation;” that is, an audience of young professionals between the ages of 25 and 49. Watson is still on the shy side of 40 and counts himself as a card-carrying member of this cohort, and freely uses the words “we” and “us” to describe his intended audience. “People in their 20s, 30s, and 40s—educated but edgy,” he says. “I don’t think of us as the same as the yuppies of 20 years ago. We are more down to earth, more digitally savvy, and more diverse.” And more global: The Stimulist aims to draw 30% of its traffic from outside of the U.S., which would be significantly more than even a site like nytimes.com gets.

Obviously, the Web is a very crowded place, and many who have succeeded in more traditional precincts of media have encountered less success online. The ultimate success of The Stimulist may hinge less on its precise editorial positioning than on whether Watson can supercharge his career and to what degree his personal brand takes root in the market. There is chatter regarding his roles being expanded at both Air America and MSNBC.

… Watson, who worked for McKinsey & Co. and started and sold an educational company before beginning a media career, is the sole bankroller behind The Stimulist, though he expects to lure outside investors eventually. The site’s managing editor is Max Linsky, a former editor in the Creative Loafing chain of alternative-weekly newspapers. Its chief operating officer and chief revenue officer is Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, who has worked closely with Watson on his TV shows.

Ben Eason, whose family started Creative Loafing in Atlanta in 1972, was vindicated in a federal bankruptcy court in Tampa today, as a judge ruled against a lender’s effort to take control of the nation’s second-largest chain of alt-weekly newspapers.

Judge Caryl E. Delano said despite contradictory (and flawed, in her estimation) reports about the chain’s value since going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2008, there was no evidence given that Eason’s management of the media company is harming its value, as lender Atalaya Capital Management had maintained in its effort to dislodge Eason and the current management.

To the contrary, Delano read from the bench, three days of hearings showed that Eason’s management had done a lot to preserve value, by making budget cuts and introducing an emphasis on web publishing models, including one in Tampa that has produced a sharp increase in web traffic while making the print edition a break-even proposition instead of a money-losing one.

“I find that Atalaya has not met its initial burden of proof and is not entitled to relief [from court stays against it foreclosing on the company's debt] at this time,” Delano said.

For Eason, who has been slagged by some former employees and in anonymous blog comments, the ruling was more than satisfying, even if the company still has a long way to go in winning confirmation and release from bankruptcy court.

“I’m psyched,” Eason said as he exited an elevator on the ground floor of the Sam Gibbons Federal Courthouse. “Just to have it over with. She came to a pretty solid decision at this point.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The battle for control of the six-alt-weekly newspaper chain Creative Loafing reaches a climax on Tuesday in a Tampa bankruptcy courtroom as Federal Judge Caryl E. Delano is set to rule on a motion by lender Atalaya Capital Management to take over the company.

Atalaya wants to foreclose on its $31 million in loans given to finance CL’s 2007 expansion and purchase of Washington City Paper and the Chicago Reader. That action was blocked when CL filed for bankruptcy court protection under Chapter 11 of the federal code in September 2008.

I’ll be there and will report as soon as possible from the anti-technology courthouse (no cell phones or laptops allowed in federal court).

DL the judge’s order setting the announcement for 2 p.m. on Tuesday, cl-ch-11-253. She’s allowing the out-of-town Atalaya attorneys to attend via telephone.

Both sides have filed their closing arguments in writing, concluding the hearing process for an attempt by lender Atalaya Capital Management to take control of the Creative Loafing newspaper chain from CEO Ben Eason. Now, federal bankruptcy District Judge Caryl Delano will rule, expected to come via telephone conference call in the next few days, possibly by Tuesday of next week.

There’s nothing new in either closing argument, just a recitation of each side’s opinion about whether the value of CL has dropped since filing for bankruptcy court protection on Sept. 29, 2008, and whether the current management is harming the company’s value and therefore diminishing the collateral used to secure $31 million in loans from Atalaya. That money was used to retire debt and purchase the Washington City Paper and Chicago Reader.

An excerpt from Atalaya’s closing argument (download it in .pdf):

Granting relief [by giving the company to Atalaya] will best protect the companies, their employees and other creditors. Declining to grant relief leaves the Debtors in substantial risk of a further decline in value, which would adversely affect not only Atalaya but hte employees and other contituencies in this case.

An excerpt from Creative Loafing’s closing argument (download it in .pdf):

In everyday parlance, the term “GIGO” is known to mean “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” In other words, bad information begets bad conclusions. With all due to respect to Mrs. [Stamos] NIcholas [Atalaya's valuation expert who testified that the company's value dropped $7 million in the three months after the bankruptcy filing], his opinion of the Debtors’ value in this case is simply wrong due to GIGO. For some unknown (but easily inferred) reason, Mr. Nicholas either was not given the relevant and available information about the Debtors, or chose to disregard that information while formulating his opinions. One of the more obvious impacts of this deficiency is that Mr. Nicholas’ opinion of value fails to account for an actual decline of almost 20% per month in revenues that occurred following the creation of the July 2008 Budget, a fact known to the Debtors and Atalaya as of the [bankruptcy] petition date.

There’s only one thing more interesting than covering news about your own employer, and that’s reading other people’s coverage of news about your own employer. In this case, it is the Chapter 11 bankruptcy hearings that have gone on over the past two weeks as one of our lenders, Atalaya Capital Management of New York, tries to gain control of the company.

Two former Loafers have weighed in on the subject, Alex Pickett and former Atlanta Editor Ken Edelstein. First, Tampa Bay CL reporter Pickett, who sat next to me here until layoffs last December. He calls Creative Loafing “the Terri Schiavo” of alternative newspaper chains:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Creative Loafing CFO Angela LaFon spent the morning testifying in our bankruptcy case today, describing how she assembled various budgets and financial forecasts that are at the heart of the company’s disputed value. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl Delano’s decision on who ends up with control of the alt-weekly chain could come late today at the end of testimony.

LaFon was asked about a summary of cost savings she prepared for the hearing, one that shows cuts made both before and after the bankruptcy filing on Sept. 29, 2008, and asked by an attorney for Atalaya Capital Management if it was proper to include the pre-bankruptcy costs cuts that were already in place as evidence of the company’s efforts to mitigate losses post-bankruptcy.

Read the rest of this entry »

I mentioned former CL reporter Alex Pickett’s new blog last week but just realized I never mentioned the new blogs from the other two editorial colleagues laid off in December.

Copy editor Anthony “Sal” Salveggi’s VIrtual Journalist keeps you up-to-date on media news and pop culture.

And music writer/Bar Tabber Wade Tatangelo is pointing to his freelance work from all over (*tbt, St Pete Times, New York Daily News et al.) on his eponymous blog.

I recommend you add all three to your RSS reader.

It was A Tale of Two Media Companies as Creative Loafing CEO and President Ben Eason testified Thursday afternoon during a hearing to determine whether he keeps ownership of the alt-newspaper chain.

Or perhaps I should write, ownership of the alt-digital media company. Much of Eason’s testimony concerned the collapse of the print news publishing economic model starting in 2005 and accelerating with the advent of the current recession in mid-2008. Under direct examination from CL’s bankruptcy lawyer David Jennis, Eason detailed how the company responded to 20 percent decreases in advertising revenues that he says company officials started seeing in July 2008.

“There’s been significant changes in our business…” Eason said in what qualified as the understatement of the day.

Read the rest of this entry »

From an afternoon of Ph.D.- or MBA-level financial testimony, here’s the bottom line in the hearing for control of the Creative Loafing chain of alternative weekly newspapers:

– Lender Atalaya Capital concluded its case with testimony from Deloitte valuation expert Stamos Nicholas, who went through a detailed report he produced that concludes Creative Loafing’s value as a company dropped from $19 million on Sept. 30, 2008 — a day after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — to $11.4 million by Dec. 31, 2008. Nicholas blamed falling revenues and operating margins at the chain, as well as a general economic collapse in the wider economy.

CL’s attorney Tim Andreu challenged Nicholas’ report on cross-examination, pointing out that Nicholas did not speak with the chain’s management to learn more details about the financial assumptions he used for his valuation.

– CL’s case starts tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 with testimony from Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason. CL’s own financial examination of the company puts the value much lower than Nicholas’ assessment and shows an increase in value over that same three-month time frame.

– The hearing will then be continued until Tuesday of the following week to hear from the company’s CFO and a Tampa Bay business valuation expert, after which Judge Caryl E. Delano (at some point) will rule on Atalaya’s motion to gain control of the company. Atalaya is owed $31 million from its fnancing of CL’s 2007 purchase of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper.

The Creative Loafing chain is in a Tampa bankruptcy court hearing today as owner Ben Eason tries to fend off his biggest creditor, which wants to take ownership of the chain and says it has “lost confidence” in Eason’s management.

Atalaya Capital Management LP, an investment fund that is owed $31 million from financing CL’s 2007 pay-down of debt and purchase of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper, said in court this morning that it would continue to operate the newspaper chain “as a going concern” and put more dollars into it rather than get rid of it in a fire sale.

Read the rest of this entry »

Never underestimate the lengths to which an overworked, overstressed mother of twins will go to get out of the house.

Creative Loafing has a new website and I’m one of their contributing writers. They invited me to their launch party and I thought it’d be fun.

That’s what I get for thinking.

I put on my hot mama jeans, did my hair, and even applied some goddamn makeup. One of my favorite Republicans, Jim Johnson, said he’d meet me there so I stuck the boys with my mom for the evening and took off for South Tampa.

Read the rest of this entry »

From Erik Wemple, at our Washington City Paper:

Real-time blogging going on right here. I’m in a conference call with my bosses at Creative Loafing Inc. (CL), which owns us, Washington City Paper, as well as five other alt-weeklies. One purpose of the conference call, according to our corporate No. 2 Kirk MacDonald, is to address our “cost structure.”

Actually, that’s my cost structure. Starting in April, CL will be cutting executive compensation by five to 15 percent. MacDonald said that he and our CEO, Ben Eason, will take the highest percentage cut–15 percent–and others will get more moderate slices. Those others include publishers, sales execs, and top editors at the publications as well as some other corporate types.

Read the full post here.

And here is our Tampa Editor David Warner’s post from sis blog, Daily Loaf:

During a conference call this morning, Creative Loafing President Ben Eason and COO Kirk MacDonald told managers at the six papers in the CL chain (CL Tampa, Sarasota, Atlanta and Charlotte, the Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper) that their salaries are going to be cut in the range of 5%-15%, effective the first payroll period in April. Eason and MacDonald will take the biggest cuts. City Paper Editor Eric Wemple expressed gratitude during the call that the company had decided to go this route instead of laying off any more staff. (Here’s his post, live-blogged during the call.) In Tampa, in addition to the salary reductions at the corporate level, the paper’s publisher, ad director and editor — that’s me — will be taking cuts.

MacDonald explained the cuts as a reaction to declining ad revenues. In this climate, he said, “the cost structure at all media companies, including ours, is too high.” Creative Loafing filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last October, and is in the midst of reorganization; Eason expressed confidence that the company will emerge from bankruptcy by late summer.

Meanwhile, Tampa’s paper has something to celebrate. Preliminary financials for the month of February show the paper breaking even after a stretch of losses, and traffic to the paper’s website has markedly increased since a redesign was introduced in mid-January.

So, with good bad news and good good news at hand, CL Tampa is throwing a party. We’ll be formally launching the new site tonight at an Open House at the CL offices from 6-8 p.m. Meet the CL staff, talk with our new team of bloggers and have a drink on us.

From former CL Atlanta staffer Steve Fennessy writes in his Atlanta mag blog:

For those who think I’ve let lapse my casual obsession with the Creative Loafing Inc. bankruptcy, rest easy. There’s more news! Turns out that Brian Conley, who once owned the alternative newspaper in Knoxville, TN, and is now helping to finance the Sunday Paper’s expansion into other cities, has offered to buy all six papers in the Creative Loafing chain. Offer price? $13.3 million.

In a response to an email I sent him, Ben Eason, Creative Loafing Inc.’s CEO, said his company’s financial adviser, Bryan Crino, has been in touch with Conley. However, Eason wouldn’t characterize what reaction, if any, he has to the offer. “You can read any and all about CL on our websites when there is something to report,” he wrote in the email.

Read the rest of this entry »

The owner of Creative Loafing (principally, Ben Eason, and technically he’s the debtor-in-possession) was again in federal bankruptcy court today in the company’s continuing Chapter 11 case. It was supposed to be a day-long hearing to decide whether Judge Caryl E. Delano should allow the biggest creditors — Atalaya Administrative LLC and Atalaya Funding II LP that lent more than $30 million to CL to finance the purchase of the Washington City Paper and Chicago Reader two years ago — to declare its loans in default and take immediate ownership of the alt-weekly chain.

That possible outcome didn’t happen.

Without going into lots of technical bankruptcy law and financial valuation methodology, I’ll just report that testimony in the hearing didn’t go off as planned and has been continued to March 11. Both sides, while complaining of the effect of the delays (CL’s attorney argued that every day the ownership issue isn’t settled makes it harder to find new equity partners and reorganize the company; Atalaya’s lawyer argued that the value of its collateral continues to decline and is losing the hedge fund millions) worked together during an hour-long recess to reconfigure the Chapter 11 timeline for the case.

Two more hearings, to determine the value of the company and approve part of the reorganization plan, were also scheduled on Wednesday, for late March and early April.

If you come straight to this blog you may have missed some of the changes to Creative Loafing’s website late Tuesday. We have a new home page that features the day’s top headlines from CL stories and others in local, state and national media, including the MSM and bloggers.

Throughout the day, my colleagues and I will feed the best news and political stories (and also art, music and other areas we cover) into this new home page (yes, it’s news aggregation or link journalism, take your pick), so be sure to check it out. Our goal is to be your alternative source for news that is important to us in Tampa Bay, either because it happens here or because it affects us all.

Part of the redesign is a new News section, also. If you just want to find out the most important political and public affairs news, this new section is for you. The day’s most important stories (from both this column and from other news sources) are refreshed throughout the day, new comments from this blog are featured and the best news videos appear at the bottom of the page.

Given those new features, I am no longer going to do Morning Roundup here, since the News section is essentially an All-Day Roundup. I will continue to feature videos, both funny and important, in this blog and hope to bring you a new Media Watch feature soon, reviewing the work of local and state media in covering our community and the Florida legislature.

We’re looking for feedback, so if you are inclined, please leave a comment here or click the comment ask at the top of the new Home Page. If there is something we’re missing or types of news you want featured, let us know. We made these changes for you, so let us know what information you need each day.

Finally, I’m happy to report that I’m going to add some new voices to this blog (and to our family of news blogs at CL). Soon, you will start seeing posts from Catherine Durkin Robinson, whose blog Out in Left Field, is billed as a place “Where parenting and politics meet, but don’t always play nice;” and Deborah Newell Tornello, better known in progressive blogging circles as Litbrit. They join guest blogger and east Hillsborough civic activist Kelly Cornelius, whose Fix It Now posts have run in Daily Loaf before moving to this blog earlier this year.

I am talking with several other prominent local bloggers to add them to either this blog or to a new blog at CL, so I will have other additions to share with you soon.

Our former music writer and Bar Tab columnist Wade Tatangelo, laid off in December in a round of budget cuts here, has landed a new bar-writing gig, with the St. Petersburg Times’ daily free tabloid *tbt. Here’s the announcement:

Good news for all you intoxication connoisseurs in Tampa Bay. Tbt* has found a new Barfly who will be hitting the streets in search of the best places for booze hounds to go. Wade Tatangelo is the new man who will steer you to beer and he’s off to a good start with his new review of the Beef O’ Brady’s on the USF campus that will be published in Friday’s tbt*. Formerly, Wade was the music critic at Creative Loafing but his skills will put to good use at tbt* as you can see below.

“Nestled in the Marshall Student Center on the USF Tampa campus, this Beef ’0’ Brady’s is the place to enjoy hot wings and other pub grub goodies alongside undergrads in a room decked out in Bulls green and gold. There’s a 10-stool bar, cafeteria-style seating, a dozen LCD screens and billiards tables. And yes, there is beer and wine. But if you wish to enjoy an adult beverage, don’t arrive before 5 p.m. Apparently school officials are afraid students might tie one on before suffering through that College Algebra course. Guess they’re not worried about night class inebriation,” — Wade Tatangelo

That’s just a teaser, but I’ll link up the full review when it’s available or you can check it out in Friday’s tbt*.

Tatangelo joins a number of journalists who departed their papers recently and have found new work at the Times, including former Tampa Tribune columnist Dan Ruth, who writes a Friday op-ed column, and former Tribune classical music and science writer Kurt Loft, whose first arts piece for the Times ran on Sunday.

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.

On a second part of Atalaya’s takeover motion, Delano set a date for a final evidentiary hearing, Jan. 21. At issue is whether the bankruptcy court’s automatic stay (which prohibits Atalaya from declaring Creative Loafing in default for not paying on more than $30 million it lent to the newspaper chain in 2007) is harming the value of Atalaya’s investment in the company. The lender and CL will present evidence of how much the chain is worth and whether that value is declining since the newspaper declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Atalaya insists that delaying the default is causing the value to plummet lower, wiping out its investment. If it prevails on this issue, it could declare a default and own the company.

Delano also approved a controversial hiring of Tampa-based Skyway Advisors to give Creative Loafing financial advice. Atalaya had objected to an original contract with the advisors that included lucrative investment banking services in addition to financial counsel. Creative Loafing withdrew those provisions and Atalaya dropped its objection.

The financial picture for those owed money by Creative Loafing isn’t pretty, according to Terry Boatner, the U.S. trustee who represents unsecured creditors in the case. “This debtor is really way under water,” Boatner told the court, as she objected to Skyway’s hiring. Boatner also cited anonymous complaints made to her office that alleged that Skyway was the “architect” of the strategic directions that led Creative Loafing to bankruptcy court in the first place. Boatner said that complaint was left on her voice mail without any identification from a telephone number in the Midwest. (Skyway did advise Creative Loafing on its purchase of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper in 2007 that was financed by Atalaya and another leader, BIA.)

Atalaya remains critical of the current Creative Loafing management and said the reorganization plan submitted earlier this week raises more questions than it gives answers. “We don’t know a lot of things,” said Tyler P. Brown, a Richmond, Va.-based attorney for Atalaya. The remaining questions: Who will be the new equity partners in a reorganized Creative Loafing, and how much will they be contributing. It is also uncertain how much of its investment it will recoup, with the current reorganization plan putting the figure at between $5 million and $15 million.

David S. Jennis, CL’s Tampa bankruptcy lawyer, told the court that those investment details will be coming soon. “We’re not able to do so at this time,” Jennis said. “There are ongoing negotiations.”

A Jan. 26 hearing is also set to review the proposed reorganization plan.

I’ll be down at the federal courthouse today at 2 p.m. as Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano could decide if lender Atalaya gets to enforce its default on $30 million+ worth of loans and assume control of our newspaper chain from current CEO and chairman Ben Eason.

Here’s Atalaya’s amended motion in which it argues it is better able to run CL than Eason and the current owners.

Our alt-newspaper chain has filed its Chapter 11 reorganization plan, making its case for continuing ownership and management by Ben Eason:

The Debtor believes retention of existing senior management and existing publishers, editors, directors of shared services and key online personnel are vital to successful implementation of this strategy as the markets are shifting very quickly at this time.

The reorganization plan values the company, post-bankruptcy, at being worth $8 million to $15 million. It also appears to ask creditors, especially the largest creditor, Atalaya, to accept as little as half of what they are owed as the company tries to readjust its debt load. The filing says under the reorganization plan, there would be a 100 percent chance that Atalaya would recover its $5 million-$15 million in secured debt (out of a total in excess of $30 million). The chances of getting its investment back beyond that? “Undetermined” is how the plan puts it, as it would have to split an unknown pool of money that would be left over the next three years of operations.

You can download the Disclosure Statement portion of the Reorganization Plan here. The filings include a 10-year financial forecast and an analysis of how much the company would bring if it were liquidated.

A hearing on the adequacy of the plan is set for Jan. 26 in Tampa.

Major props to my colleagues Wade Tatangelo and Eric Snider, working with a team of folks here at Alt News Central that includes our multimedia producer Stephen Hammill, for the new dynamic music section they launched today. More stories about national and local acts in a cleaner, easier to use format, and those are my words, not any marketing spin.

Check it out here.

We will be fanning our correspondents out throughout Tampa Bay tomorrow in search of the pulse of the electorate … and Jello shots.

Log in to PoHo blog starting in the morning for our coverage of Election 2008, coverage throughout the day that will end up being anchored at our multimedia Election 2008 Media Center (Joe the Blogger’s couch at home) starting at 7 p.m. Here’s what we have on tap so far:

9 a.m. — Senior Editor Eric Snider will be reporting in from his polling place in St. Petersburg to give us an idea of how long the lines are.

Throughout the day, news from Alex Pickett covers Pinellas County breaking election news and Wayne Garcia handles Hillsborough.

7 p.m. — Pickett takes to the streets of St. Pete to report on the end of the voting and reactions to returns as they come in; Snider blogs about voting in a mixed marriage (he’s for Obama, she’s for McCain) over on The Daily Loaf; David Warner visits several election parties, including the Stonewall Democrats; Brian Ries reports from Sarasota where the Vern Buchanan-Christine Jennings race has dominated the ballot; and Wade Tatangelo holds down the fort at the TIny Tap in SoHo Tampa, equal parts politics and cheap beer. Leilani Polk, Sal the Angry Copy Editor and Stephen Hammill join in with blog and vlog reports about the returns and coverage of the coverage.

7:30 p.m. — Garcia reports from “Barack Obama’s Florida Campaign for Change statewide Election Night event ” in downtown Tampa. He’ll also visit the Republican Party of Florida/Pinellas REC’s party in downtown St. Pete at some point in the evening.

Joe the Blogger gives Pinellas, Hillsborough and national vote totals throughout the evening as they come in.

Sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m. — Garcia reports from the Kevin Beckner for HIllsborough County Commission party at Gaspar’s Grotto in Ybor City.

10:30 p.m. — Garcia will talk live on WMNF 88.5 FM community news coverage of the election for 30 minutes.

Later into the evening — CL correspondents go in search of the best Election Night celebrations, being careful of course to observe all state laws and journalism ethics.

Let us know in comments if you have a particularly groovy Election Night planned.

I’m talking politics and the last week of the campaign this morning at 10 on Studio 10 on WTSP 10 Connects. (That’s a whole lotta 10’s.) Join me, Holley and Jerome from the comfort of your own living room or at work.

Our colleagues at the Washington City Paper have posted a hilarious and insightful parody of our bankruptcy filings. Here’s an excerpt:

6. The journalism/content of City Paper has also undergone a significant upheaval in the age of the Internet. Even before City Paper began placing its stories online, its journalists suspected that perhaps not a great multitude of readers were reading their work. Specific concerns clustered over the paper’s cover story, often a long piece of narrative journalism exceeding 5,000 words. Other questions about reader popularity attached to smaller news stories as well, which often related to landlord-tenant disputes, police misconduct, and, once, the rise of chai.

7. Web traffic numbers have confirmed the editorial department’s concerns. In early 2006, for instance, a City Paper staff writer began a written correspondence with a federal inmate named Thomas Sweatt, who was serving a life sentence for setting a series of fires in the Washington area. The letters continued for more than a year, as did a parallel investigation into the damage done by Sweatt’s fire-setting. The investigation turned up two deaths from Sweatt’s rampage that the public did not know about. The story would later win the Livingston Award. The paper posted the story, titled “Letters from an Arsonist,” on washingtoncitypaper.com on June 1, 2007, since which point it has attracted 5,748 pageviews. Meanwhile, an item on the paper’s blog titled “Obama, You’ve Got Something….” has attracted 10,128 pageviews in the past five weeks alone. The blog item was a commentary, written in a ranting style, on the appearance of a fragment of saliva on the face of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama during his 2008 convention speech.

You can read the entire pseudo-court document online.

Filed under Ch. 86 for news reorganization

Our financial reorganization is drawing quite a bit of interest from all over the place (on the same day, unfortunately, that the Tampa Tribune is laying off a few more workers, including editorial page columnist Joe Brown). Here’s a sampling:

It is the unfortunate direction of all print media. Newspapers, magazines, and such media depend on advertising to survive. Why would someone want to pay $10-30 for 3-4 lines of text in classified advertising when a free ad with unlimited text, anonymized response links (so unknowns do not call your home), and multiple photos on a place like Craig’s List [tampa.craigslist.com]? The Tribune, TBT, and Creative Loafing still get more overall local readers, but until they update, they cannot compete. One would think by now the Tribune would even have special links in the ads so that those that pay to list them can have pictures added online.

I like Creative Loafing because of the activity listings and local stories (the Tribune seems to have little real local content that isn’t focused on car crashes, press releases, or celebrity news). When is the last time anyone recalls the Tribune really doing an in-depth, politically dangerous expose on any subject? They did have a long article regarding accidental arson in Plant City years ago, but I wouldn’t really term that as an expose. — comment on tbo.com

Eric Deggans reports on a dispute between CL and one of the investors who financed the Chicago-Washington purchase last year:

Despite a story on the Washington City Paper Web site quoting Creative Loafing Inc. president Ben Eason saying “this filing has little to do with the acquisition,” documents included with the bankruptcy filing indicate the company had trouble keeping up with payments on a $30-million loan taken last year to pay down $15-million in debts and to purchase the two newspapers.

According to documents included with the bankruptcy filing, Creative Loafing missed an interest payment of $282,219 on Dec. 24, a $10,000 servicing fee on Dec. 31 and an interest payment of $294,369 due Jan. 24.

Also according to the documents, as the media economy grew worse, Creative Loafing negotiated agreements to modify the financing terms with Atalaya Funding in New York and BIA Digital Partners. But last week, Atalaya said the company was in default, though Creative Loafing disagrees, according to the court document.

Creative Loafing has asked the court to prevent Atalaya or Atalaya and BIA from taking control of the company, allowing Eason to focus on reorganizing to better meet its debt obligations and develop the online revenue sources prompting the Reader and City Paper purchases.

From Erik Wemple, editor at our sister Washington City Paper:

The move does contain good news for editorial departments in the chain. Eason announced that cuts to edit staffs at all the papers would be rolled back but stressed that all the papers should proceed with “Web-first” publishing strategies, in which writers and editors customize their content for the Internet and subsequently transfer that content into their print products.

From The Business Journal in Tampa Bay:

The bankruptcy filing comes the same day Creative Loafing sued Atalaya Administrative LLC, Atalaya Funding II LP and BIA Digital Partners SBIC II LP asking a judge to stop a default on $40 million in loans. In the suit, filed with the same court, Creative Loafing said the lenders failed to act in good faith when they refused to negotiate lowering the financial covenants. Without the injunction, Creative Loafing says it has no other options in stopping the default, as it would be “too late to save the debtors’ businesses, reputation, and close-knit and effective management.”

From paidcontent.org at Washington Post:

Likely means the BIA funding went south, somewhere along the line, as of course did the company’s fortunes. The company also denies any connection between the acquisitions last year and Ch 11, and says there won’t be any major layoffs…lotsa spin in there, if you ask me.

From our sister Chicago Reader:

In a telephone conversation with executives of his newspapers, Eason sounded relentlessly chipper, and he emphasized that all his company seeks from bankruptcy is the opportunity to restructure its debts. Liquidation is not being considered. “This is a profitable business,” he declared. “The company has a good cash flow. It has a good market position. Online revenues more than doubled in the last year.” But print revenues have fallen off dramatically over the past year at Creative Loafing and throughout the newspaper business. He said in the past three months total revenues were down 10 to 15 percent from the same months a year ago.

The douchebags at Philebrity:

Food for thought: So Creative Loafing, an alt-weekly chain/parent company thing that mostly covers cities you would not live in with even with somebody else’s dick, totally screwed the pooch and declared bankruptcy so that its papers — including Washington City Paper — can better “focus” their efforts online. You can see where we might be going with this: With the Philadelphia Weekly having been rumored to have slashed its freelance budget entirely (no shit! more on this later!) and the City Paper spectacularly lunching its most spectacular issue of the feckackular year, is this a trend that might look juicy to guys like Paul Curci and Anthony Clifton? Our guess: Not yet, but it will.

The Gawker:

This may be just a foreshadowing of some painful days to come for alt-weeklies in general—we also hear the Village Voice may be on the verge of some layoffs.

From the Shameless Self-Promotion Department here at PoHo comes news of my upcoming speaking engagement:

HAS TAMPA “JUMPED THE SHARK?”*

Wayne Garcia makes his case for why Tampa has fallen behind in its quest for greatness as he wanders into the Tiger’s Den. Garcia, a longtime Bay area journalist, wrote in his Dec. 26 column titled “Fix It Now” that it is time for a reality check. “I wonder where my — our — optimism went? (I’m guessing it moved to St. Pete along with my former South Tampa circle of friends.) The truth is we have some long-standing issues in our region that need to be addressed, and we have some tough choices and sacrifices to make if we are to rebuild hope, restore optimism and bring all Bay area residents into the cultural and political mix.” Come hear him make his case for our region and share with us his Top 10 civic problems we have to solve right now.

(*The term “jumping the shark” has come to mean the point at which something good turns into something bad, as in the “Happy Days” episode where desperate scriptwriters conjured up a show where Fonzi literally jumped a shark-filled tank pen on his motorcycle water skis.

The Tiger Bay Club meets at noon at Maestro’s in the TBPAC, and anyone can join the club (for a price).

And as a bonus, here is the photo that runs with the Tampa Tiger Bay Club announcement as proof that I no longer look anything like the photo above.

First it was Chicago and Washington; then came our Atlanta paper, where editor Ken Edelstein reports we aid off seven employees:

In Atlanta, we laid off four sales people, a marketing assistant, a sales assistant and our wonderful assistant distribution manager — seven employees total. No Edit staff member was among those cuts, but that’s partly because we have a couple of open positions right now.

The edit departments at the Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper – altweeklies that Creative Loafing Inc. bought last August — were hit a bit harder. Reader Editor Alison True had to lay off John Conroy and three other highly respected, longtime staff writers on Friday. City Paper editor Erik Wemple laid off four writers and an editorial assistant. (Even though he mocked us as “unfortunately named,” NYT media columnist David Carr, who happens to be a former City Paper editor, had an interesting take on the Chicago and D.C. layoffs.)

Why is this happening? Did CL overextend when it purchased City Paper and the Reader?

Not according to CL CEO Ben Eason. Eason’s always argued that small players such as Creative Loafing Inc., which he runs out of our Tampa headquarters, will only be able to compete in today’s highly competitive media environment by becoming effective platforms for national advertisers, in addition to the local advertisers who traditionally provide the bulk of the revenue for altweeklies. In his view, he had little choice but to seek out the financing to expand. And the merger gave CL a presence in three of the country’s top 10 markets.

It’s no secret that City Paper and the Reader already were struggling before the purchase. Neither is it a mystery that our existing papers — Atlanta, Tampa, Charlotte and Sarasota — face a lot more competition than we have in the past both in print and online.

We’re not alone. CL’s going through the same sort of difficult transition that’s hitting other media companies. For the last few years, ad dollars have been moving at an accelerated pace to the Web. Classified ads, which must now compete with free online sites such as Craigslist, are in the toilet. Now the economy’s soft (to put it politely), which has particularly hit real-estate advertising.

You hear a lot more about such struggles at the dailies — because, well, they’re much, much bigger, so they make bigger news. The AJC’s print circ keeps dropping and despite pretty strong online numbers, it’s been forced to undergo some drastic restructuring. As CL’s Scott Henry reported, AJC Editor Julia Wallace cut her staff by around 80 people last spring.

The real question for me, and I suspect for most readers, is how we can do as good or better a job under such circumstances at giving Atlanta the great journalism it deserves — whether that’s in the form of investigative stories, local news coverage, great criticism or basic listings. And tied to that: Will all the effort we’re putting into blogs, podcasts, reader-submitted columns and other Web-only content help us serve our readers even better?

Commenters were mostly kind, but one serves as the archetype of the “CL is fucking up the world” post:

sonya Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm For another version of this story, without the self-serving drivel, read about the layoffs in the Dec. 10 New York Times.

The Chicago Reader was a good newspaper. Creative Loafing is running it into the ground just as fast as it can.

Yes, Sonya, we bought the Reader and City Paper just so we could run it into the ground and extract the “tremendous riches” that both contain. What horseshit. This company is far from perfect, but the commitment to journalism is strong and ingrained, and there are no hidden riches to plunder at either the Chicago or Washington papers, just projects to modernize them, bring them into the 21st Century and figure out a way to pay for the excellent journalism both have done for decades but can’t afford to do anymore as classifieds go away, display advertising slumps, newsprint costs rise and audience dwindles.

All of the alt industry is undergoing financial stress and consolidation; the other big chain snapping up alt newspapers has a horrible reputation for axing the editorial chiefs and installing their own people and methods. CL hasn’t done that. But seriously, if a newspaper is not making money, are its owners supposed to take those losses and not do anything? That seems a sure recipe for extinction.

I bemoan the loss of a John Conroy, just as I bemoan the loss of 70 jobs (including some of my friends) at the Tampa Tribune. And the lousy job market in journalism that has all of my friends at USF St Pete worried about finding jobs. And the fact that I have less time to spend on in-depth stories than I did 10 or 15 years ago. And the fact that the consumers of news have abandoned print journalism, not that print journalism didn’t give it plenty of reasons over the years. But still, without a market, how can we provide excellent journalism?

That is the question that many good people in this industry is trying to answer, and that includes Ben Eason here at CL. I hope he or somebody else in journalism figures it out soon. For my sake. For yours.