Wait, you say "At present, the Bay Guardian owes the SF Weekly something north of $20 million (with interest accruing at a rate of about $5,000 per day). Its owner, New Times, isn't paying..."
Don't you mean "At present, the SF Weekly owes the Bay Guardian something north of $20 million (with interest accruing at a rate of about $5,000 per day). Its owner, New Times, isn't paying..."?

@1: Yes. Fixed.

$5K/day on $20M is an interest rate above 9 %/year. That's an excellent return! Can I invest in that lien?

@5: It's free. Like The Stranger.

I remember when The Weekly cost fifty cents. The Stranger changed all that.

If memory serves, it was New Times/Village Voice that gutted OC Weekly (Orange County, California) when they gained control, and chased away or killed everything/everybody who made the paper gutsy, fun, and different, including investigative reporters who brought down a corrupt Huntington Beach mayor and a corrupt Orange County sheriff--while the LA Times and the Orange County Register did fuck-all.

Any finger in the eye to Village Voice/New Times is okay by me. They have strayed very far from their roots.

Oh yeah, and the pre-VV OC Weekly endlessly mocked congress-critters such as Chris Cox (most recently a worthless SEC Chairman), Dana Rohrabacher, Robert "B-1 Bob" Dornan, and Randall "Duke" Cunningham, who were eminently mockworthy.

@8 The only thing that complements The Seattle Weekly is a fish carcass or a steaming pile of dog crap.

@9, Funny you say that, for that is precisely what happened to the Seattle Weekly when the New Times/VVM running dogs sliced it apart in '05-'06. Now its run by Mr. Milquetoast, and an unimaginative frat boy. The whole corporation is clearly very 'format' based, conservative, & bottom-line focused.
So much for the upstart 'New Times' founded in the clear-eyed optimism of 1970. Now completely co-opted by $$$ and hamstermen.

Who gets custody of Mike Seely?

I am shocked, in these times, that someone isn't paying bills quickly and promptly.

Not.

I beg to differ about the quality of the SW in recent years-- the Weekly post-New Times really hasn't been that bad of a paper. At least the cover stories and cover headlines these days get my attention at the newsstands, which they never did back when the Beard from Bainbridge was running the operation. And the Weekly seems to have recovered from that period when their average paper issue was thinner than a crepe, during a time when the Stranger was a stack of pancakes comparison.

@7. I think it climbed to 75 cents by the end.

@8 I always felt the 2 free papers in seattle are distinct and complementary, not really competing.

Sorry, I don't mean to mock, I just want it on record that I'm chuckling heartily at the moment.

I hope the SF Guardian takes over the Seattle Weekly.

The SF Bay Guardian is a great alternative paper with some serious investigative journalism.

The Seattle Weekly by comparison is a piece of crap, especially after the Village Voice bought it. I noticed it immediately. They don't cover local politics as much anymore and they don't even do endorsements.

actually, they had a pretty decent end of the year music issue, so don't be so harsh on SW.

I might be biased, but everyone was talking about The Stranger's election coverage last year. Whether you agree with their endorsements or not (I admit I did), they gave the election character that's usually absent from local races, and they articulated their side of the matter in a noticeably creative way. A lot of people probably wouldn't have even thought about last year's local elections, one way or the other, had The Stranger not opened discussion about them.

I don't remember a thing about the Weekly's coverage. But I'm sure they had a nice, measured and carefully phrased opinion that properly reflected Seattle Spunk(TM) while not alienating the VV Board of Directors.

Sorry if I'm too catty. Well, no, I'm not sorry. That would be too Weekly of me.

@26: You just described Wal-Mart.

@24

How about this:

It's a price point at which the income generated by the ad revenue would be insufficient to offset cost and keep the business operating...that is without the help of (very large) outside bank accounts (i.e. corporate coffers or rich benefactor).

Ah, the death throes of print media. The fact that they even have delivery vans to repo says a lot about the future viability of that business model.

I agree with @16. The Seattle Weekly is a much better paper now than it was five years ago.

I don't see how a person can simultaneously be a fan of a lefty paper like The Stranger and believe that having fewer local alt media options is a good thing.

The Weekly certainly doesn't have the balls of The Stranger, but it sometimes publishes interesting, intelligent, and original pieces of the sort that you won't find in The Stranger.

The Bay Guardian is almost unreadable. It's written and edited by humorless, sanctimonious, far-far-far left twits. They have a couple of hobbyhorses (public power is good! property owners are bad! Green party is good! Democratic party is bad!) that they just flog over. and over. and over. and over. It's the same boring thing every issue, unleavened by any hint of wit or self-awareness.

They have a good food critic in Paul Reidinger. Otherwise, that paper is unredeemed.

I don't like that the SF Weekly has out-of-town owners, and I don't like the commodity-oriented format of the New Times chain, but the SF Weekly has *WAY* better writers and editors than the Bay Guardian, and in the past the paper has managed some very good in-depth local investigative pieces. They did a truly fantastic series on the pollution in Hunter's Point a few years back, for example. Won tons of journalism awards.

So, much as I hate to admit it, the truth is that the local paper is crap and the corporate-owned one is actually pretty decent. So I really hope the Guardian doesn't succeed in bankrupting the SF Weekly with this dubious-sounding lawsuit.

@17. exactly. many years history of doing such to drive other interesting lefty or culture or music rags outta business.

@17 and @37, as a one time co-publisher of another local lefty culture rag, yes, The Stranger was totally guilty of the exact same tactics. It's not so fun when you are a struggling indie paper filling a niche and growing an audience and a massive more established paper offers every single one of your advertisers slashed/artificially low rates. Funny that The Stranger criticizes such action now when they are guilty of it themselves, but I have a feeling their editorial probably doesn't know what their advertising department does. I never realized we could have sued them! It's water under the bridge at this point... and I still dig the Stranger, although hate how ruthless it is towards other publications in town.