The LA Weekly lately has promoted the timeliness of its website, quickly posting news and observations before the paper comes out. Not so on the topic of the paper's soon-to-be-new ownership. Nary a word. The OC Weekly, meanwhile, has ventured into the shark-infested waters via Executive Editor Matt Coker's blog, A Clockwork Orange.

It's over baby. Our greatest fears when we previously drooled onto our keyboard about the possible merger were whether the New Times folks, who have a reputation for neoconnism, will be able to live in peace with the Voice folks, who have a reputation for commie pinko faggism. And, seeing as how the New Times folks will control the majority of the corp.'s new board, and seeing has how OC Weekly staffers are card-carrying commie pinko fags, was does this portend for -- gulp -- lil ol' us?

No worries, say the Cal Coolidge killers in everything that's trickled down on us like so much piss and Reaganomics. As long as we keep making money, they'll leave us alone.

Allegedly.

He makes the valid point that even though New Times brass all but called the Bay Guardian liars for publishing leaks about the merger talks, the Guardian story proved to be substantially true. Meanwhile, former LA Weekly editor-in-chief Kit Rachlis (who also was executive editor of the Village Voice and now heads Los Angeles magazine) says in the Boston Phoenix: "This is not a good thing for the alternative press. It's not a good thing that a single company will own a greater percentage of alternative weeklies" than any mainstream company's share of the daily newspaper universe. "The alternative press thought this was bad for daily papers, I don't know why it thinks it's good for itself."

* Also: At her blog Hipspinster, CityBeat's Natalie Nichols recalls the day in 1996 when New Times showed up in Los Angeles the first time. Michael Lacey (executive editor of all the New Times papers) gathered together the staff at The Reader, the paper where she worked. 2:55 pm

trying to be funny, he said to us after we'd filed dutifully into the conference room, "well, the rumors are true. you've been bought by the evil empire!" our stony faces indicated we didn't find that amusing. things went downhill from there. oh, sure. he talked about how talented we all must be, and blah blah blah. but he was there, in part, to stage a very public execution....

lacey went down the line of us sitting at that conference table, shooting figurative bullets into most of my friends: "we don't have a place for you ... you ... you ... ," he said, pointing his lethal finger at each of my colleagues in turn. he paused at me and said, "and you're out, because you don't want to deal with us." hahahaha!! no, actually, mr. lacey, my departure from the reader had nothing to do with you or your company. i said as much. my clarification was, of course, not welcome. after all, he'd made up his mind. why bother him with the facts? this seemed more or less the NT approach the entire time it was in l.a.: that this non-l.a.-based company somehow knew the l.a. market and the readership better than anyone who had worked in l.a. media, ever. of course, that's why it was so wildly successful the first time.