wow… just, wow
So ok, I’m probably the only one that’s been following this and/or cares, but the San Francisco Bay Guardian has just won it’s case against SF Weekly. SF’s two alternative weeklies have been battling it out for months, with the Guardian claiming that the Weekly sold ads at below cost specifically to hurt the Guardian and then used funds from parent company Village Voice Media to stay in business. From the beginning, this whole thing has seemed a lot like a couple of kids fighting over the sandbox, which has been made only more evident by both sides pointing fingers in the blogosphere (check out the mudslinging and hair-pulling here and here.) As someone who’s worked in advertising sales, I can say the one thing that hurts ALL ad revenue, especially in SF, are places like Craigslist.com and other free online sites. Nobody uses classifieds in the paper anymore, and many businesses are moving their marketing campaigns solely to the web. Is SF Weekly lucky that some of VVM’s other markets make more money and therefore can maybe help their younger, poorer sibling out? Sure. Does that mean that what they did is wrong? I’m honestly surprised that the jury thinks so. And it appears I’m not the only one. So the verdict is that the Weekly has to fork over $15M (some sources say $6.3M, and I can’t seem to find a definite number), but we’ll obviously see an appeal. It’ll be most interesting to see if these two weeklies — always at odds over the same reviews, listings and features — can both come out of this alive, or if we’ll suddenly be one paper shorter. Seems like they’re dropping like flies…
