Late Tuesday afternoon came news that CL's corporate daddy for the past year, Nashville based Southcomm, Inc., had just acquired two additional alt-newsweeklies that used to be part of CL's former corporate family, the Washington D.C. City Paper and the Atlanta Creative Loafing paper.
We won't get into all of the details of what's happened with CL's corporate structure in recent years, but you're forgiven if you follow the trevails of this paper and have a bit of deja vu upon reading the news. Cl started in Atlanta 40 years ago, with the Tampa edition created in 1988 (for a few years it was called the Weekly Planet before going back to the CL moniker six years ago). The chain added Charlotte and Sarasota to its portfolio, until 2007, when owner Ben Eason got ambitious and purchased City Paper out of D.C. and the Chicago Reader. Two years later, Cl was in bankruptcy court, and hedge fund Atalaya became the owner of the five papers.
That remained status quo for awhile, but then the Sarasota paper folded. Then last fall Southcomm came in and purchased the CL papers here and in Charlotte, meaning CL-Tampa was no longer affiliated with CL Inc.
Tuesday's purchase brings the three newspapers in the country that go by the CL title all together again, and SouthComm now owns 8 alt-weeklies nationally. Is this a good deal for CL readers here in Tampa? Hopefully. We put out a call to SouthComm CEO Chris Ferrell on Tuesday and hope to hear back from him. If so, you'll read about it here.
Okay, what the heck is going on the day after the mid-week national holiday?
CL spoke the other day to the two Tampa City Council members who publicly dissented with Mayor Bob Buckhorn's "Event Zone" ordinance came before the board. They both said that though they have their issues with Tampa's preparations for protesters to the RNC, they don't think one activist's call for his group to control the protest zones during the convention is a good idea.
And what about the platform that the GOP will stand behind in Tampa during the RNC? What's going to be written about immigration? A prominent group out of Texas has their opinions on that.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2012.