Chris Ferrell's New Company Buys The City Paper
Nashville is back to being a one-daily town after start-up publishing company SouthComm Communications announced plans to purchase The City Paper and publish it only twice a week. Former Scene publisher Albie Del Favero, who now has the same job at The City Paper told his startled staff yesterday afternoon before the paper broke the news of the sale on its website.
SouthComm Communications—which is manned by Chris Ferrell, another erstwhile Scene publisher—is the parent company of online news site NashvillePost.com and Music Row and just days ago purchased Business TN. The City Paper, though, will be SouthComm's highest profile purchase yet. Launched in the fall of 2000 by former insurance executive Brian Brown, the free daily quickly become a well-read, if not particularly influential, newspaper capitalizing on The Tennessean's occasional disinterest in local news. Under editor Clint Brewer, The City Paper amped up its political coverage and became more relevant, although (judging by its often anemic page count) the business model never took off.
Now the paper will publish twice weekly, with plans to come out Mondays and Fridays starting April 28. The City Paper will still deliver daily news on its website, Nashvillecitypaper.com. It's not known yet how SouthComm will juggle both The City Paper's website and NashvillePost.com, since the two will be competing for the same stories and readers.
Check Pith later this morning for more details.
Comments
Unless both sites go the pay route, eyeballs will gravitate to the free site. I do (will). Maybe others are (will be) like me.
Posted 04/10/2008 at 10:08:02 AMI hope that will make the CityPaper site as functional as the Post site. Maybe they could buy and fix The Tennessean while they're out there getting a corner on Nashville on-line journalism.
Posted 04/10/2008 at 11:12:57 AMJust because a print publication delivers its news more online than in print doesn't mean Nashville "is back to being a one-daily town."
Nashville benefits when those who deliver the news do it more frequently and in a medium where the market is growing as opposed to being a "daily" struggling to compete in a paper chase with a market that is steadily disappearing.
The Scene, Tennessean and other print brands will have to make some tough decisions if they want to compete where SouthComm is quickly positioning itself.
Posted 04/10/2008 at 11:35:59 AM