It's funny to read cartoonist Lloyd Dangle's take on the matter: http://troublogtown.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-times-swallows-voice_24.html

As Lloyd Dangle notes, the chain that owned Village Voice was once owned by a pet food magnate. After that, it was owned by Goldman Sachs, Weisspeck & Greer, and Canadian Imperial, as noted on The Stranger's web log. So, one the one hand, big deal, nothing new. On the other hand, the changes that the blogger at Zentronix predicts have long been in effect: "This merger is likely to push freelancer rates even lower, as NT execs ask editors why they are paying so much for mere 'content.' Writers, after all, are worth much less than a dime a dozen." Purging freelancers & pushing or holding writers' rates down are problems in all the alt weeklies, no matter who owns them. The eulogy started long ago.

True, true, Nadia. Agreed. There is something, though, about the merger that confirms or brings into full relief the long, slow decline.

Maybe the day will come when we pick up these weeklies for the ads alone, since that's all they'll be printing.

And where will the writers go? A lot of them are already out here on the blogs, of course, and newer voices may be more eager to write for online publications such as Senses of Cinema and Bright Lights than for their local weekly. Many already are, and justifiably so.

It's 6:30pm on the east coast and there's no new film articles have appeared on the Village Voice site (nor have any film items filtered into my RSS feed). The apocalypse begins!

And now we know: They were working on that special. The slide show of covers dating back to 1955 (!) is definitely worth clicking through, by the way.