NEW YORK, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- New York's venerable Village Voice said Monday it is merging with an Arizona-based media chain.
Village Voice Media, which owns the left-leaning institution, and New Times Media of Phoenix will form a new company that will be called Village Voice Media. The new company will be run by New Times' current top executives.
VVM will publish free newspapers and operate Web sites for 17 of the largest U.S. media markets for a combined weekly audited circulation of 1.8 million papers and 4.3 million readers weekly, when the merger is completed.
The Village Voice, which now owns five papers besides its iconic New York City flagship, was founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and famed novelist Norman Mailer and quickly established a reputation as an authoritative voice of progressive thinking on subjects from civil liberties to jazz. The New York paper has received three Pulitzer Prizes and the George Polk Award.
Village Voice papers will join New Times' national advertising sales agency Ruxton Media Group. Ruxton will represent 35 weekly alternative publications with audited circulations of 3.1 million weekly.
