Washington City Paper Up for Sale

By Michelle Lancaster. You can follow her and let her know your news on Twitter @MichLancaster. Email her at michellel[AT]@borderstan.com.

Reporters at the Washington City Paper will be taking a 5% pay cut, effective this week as the paper’s owner searches for a buyer for the paper (and sibling publications Creative Loafing Atlanta and the Chicago Reader). DCist reports on the news and includes some interesting points of information.

For example, this change in ownership is not exactly unprecedented — it was owned by the Reader until 2007, when Creative Loafing bought both publications out. In 2008, Creative Loafing declared bankruptcy and was bought out by Atalaya Capital Management. Amy Austin, City Paper publisher, told DCist she was aggressively looking for a local buyer for the paper. Blogs like ours want and need local publications such as City Paper to thrive.

The future of local papers, even of the mostly electronic variety, has been a hot topic in journalism for some time. With the traditional dailies in jeopardy, it seems only too obvious that the smaller budget publications would be facing even greater pressure to meet numbers and cut costs.

Former DCist editor Sommer Mathis opined to Borderstan in an interview last year that while digital was the future, content was still king when it came to what outlets would survive. I suppose only time will tell if that is the case for Washington City Paper.

The dedication, hard work and great content produced at so many great local publications, including WCP is essential for good local news coverage. Here at Borderstan, we are crossing our fingers for the best outcome for the publication and its staff.

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