UPDATE 1628:Chicago Reader enters Atalaya Era after Creative Loafing loses its last bid in bankruptcy court (Chicago Reader)

UPDATE 1535: Creative Loafing chain sold to biggest creditor for $5 million (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
UPDATE 1459: Washington City Paper Now Owned by Atalaya Capital (DCist)
Atalaya outbids Eason, assumes control of Creative Loafing (Creative Loafing Tampa)
UPDATE 1332: Hedge Fund Atalaya buys Creative Loafing in equity auction (Tampa Bay Business Journal)

UPDATE 1256: New York equity firm snaps up Tampa’s Creative Loafing (Tampa Tribune/TBO.com)

UPDATE 1240:Chicago Reader Has New Owners (Chicago Reader)

UPDATE 1236:Tampa’s Creative Loafing chain taken over by hedge fund Atalaya (St. Petersburg Times/tampabay.com)

UPDATE 1229: Atlanta Creative Loafing says Atalaya won.

UPDATE 1223: Chicago Reader calls it for Atalaya.

UPDATE 1218: Unconfirmed Twitter chatter is that Atalaya has won.
Read More “Who Will Own City Paper? We Just Found Out” »

Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to the last Creative-Loafing-in-bankruptcy Freedom Friday! This time next week, we very well might be under “new management,” as health-code-violating restaurants like to say.

Today: Lefties will picket the Whole Foods at P Street. Tomorrow: Righties will respond by handing out Whole Food CEO John Mackey’s Wall Street Journal editorial. In the near future: At least one person plans to boycott Wal-Mart to punish the mega retailer for pulling its ads from Glenn Beck’s show.

To all of the above, a newsflash: Boycotting is a) wrong and b) doesn’t work.

Read More “Our Morning Roundup: Boycott City” »

• Health care. Jesus Christ on toast with Marmite, am I ever sick of hearing about health care. Whole Foods—SHUT UP. Public option opponents—SHUT UP. Fox News—SHUT UP. Meanwhile, in British rationing news, I’m horrified to report that my wife’s grandmother recently had to wait over an hour to be seen, mostly because the Edinburgh Council moved the Royal Infirmary from right across the Meadows all the way out to Little France, which is as far from the city center as it sounds. This is outrageous and would never happen in the United States, where there is no socialized medicine and never will be—SHUT UP.
• MEDIA NEWS! Battle of the Hottest rages on Capitol Hill. Jayson Blair is a life coach! City Paper’s parent company begins its Week of Reckoning today! CEO tells Atlanta Journal-Constitution decision to buy CP and Chicago Reader was thoroughly vetted: “It wasn’t just me running over a cliff.”

Read More “Morning Roundup: Yesterday’s News RIGHT NOW Edition” »

Sex Day! We blogged it. Some of my faves: Cherkis’  trio of prostitute posts. Darrow’s Lorton pics. Riggs on the bike/porn shop. Godfrey! “I felt like Dad at the dinner table passing out money to his daughters.” McKenna on one of the weirdest houses in D.C. “For people with boobs, the hook-up potential is at its highest: 10. For people without boobs, you’re looking at about a 6.” Really, really great stuff, and a big hat tip to Amanda Hess for organizing something well out of much of the staff’s comfort zones. If there’s anything you’d particularly like to see (or not) in the paper next week, e-mail me.

After the jump: My favorite Post blog, old music. reality Realty, our parent company may need a CEO

Read More “Morning Roundup: The Morning After Edition” »

Our wacky company. Jesus, our wacky company. Today was the day a judge in Florida was due to decide how best to conduct an equity auction next month that’ll presumably end our company’s nearly yearlong journey through bankruptcy. She kind of punted.

But: Talk about burying the lede! Following the ruling, Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason said he was considering stepping down as CEO to, as Wayne Garcia reports, “focus on formulating a new equity bid for the post-bankruptcy company.”

This leaves us without a CEO. And in the absence of an obvious candidate, may I suggest our own City Lights editor, Mike Riggs? Some points:

Read More “Mike Riggs for CEO” »

Washington City Paper, finalists in five of the highest-circulation categories for the 2009 Association for Alternative Newsweeklies Awards, has been named the first-place winner in three of them: arts criticism, media reporting/criticism, and innovation/format buster. In addition, this blog received second-place honors and staff photographer Darrow Montgomery, who received honorable mention in the 2008 awards, was named as the third-place winner for photography at the annual convention, where winners are announced each year. More about the first-place winners:

Read More “AAN Awards Update: Washington City Paper Brings Home Three First-Place Wins” »

Pittsburgh City Paper’s cover story this week takes a whack at the ink-stained/Twitter divide, asking: “As old media struggles, is a new breed of journalists up to the job of replacing it?”

And unlike the Newseum, which essentially ignores the role of good journalism supported by slutty ads, the PCP includes alternative newsweeklies in the mix. And gives—is “props” the right word here?—to our struggles. To wit:

The alternative press isn’t exempt. The past decade has seen a wave of increased consolidation in the weekly industry, and at least one chain is now in serious financial trouble. Creative Loafing, which has its flagship paper in the big and growing Atlanta market, filed for bankruptcy this year. The company borrowed millions to buy Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper. Although all three papers were making money, when advertising slowed down, debt payments overwhelmed revenue.

So the scene is wide open for new approaches.

Hear that Newseum? Why don’t you find a new approach and build a shrine to us before we’re dead.

For real. Taylor Eason, sister of Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason, has chosen a Louis Roederer Estate Brut to celebrate the company’s recent win in bankruptcy court. It is very sensibly priced.

I’m soaking wet, dear readers. Your trusted Urban Explorer spent Thursday evening reviewing film fest screeners and sipping G&Js–damn near forgot what day it was and had to run in the rain! Creative Loafing’s cat fight, Rush Limbaugh’s exploitative second cousin, social engineering and more, after the jump:

Read More “Our Morning Roundup: Who Loves “Rusty” Limbaugh?” »

A federal judge in Tampa has just ruled in favor of Creative Loafing Inc. CEO Ben Eason in a bankruptcy struggle with the company’s main creditor, Atalaya Capital Management. Holder of $31 million in Creative Loafing debt, Atalaya was seeking to gain control of the company. The court denied Atalaya’s motions and directed the two to figure out a reorganization plan for the company. Our sister paper in Tampa is following the story.

Another day, another update about the bankruptcy case filed by Creative Loafing, our parent company.

Apparently a judge in the bankruptcy court will announce tomorrow if Creative Loafing’s current owners can continue owning us and the rest of the chain, or if Atalaya, a creditor owed oodles (and a firm that also owns Bennigans), will be granted permission to take over.

Here’s the money graph from Creative Loafing-Tampa Bay, the home newspaper of the group that bought us in 2007:

Atalaya wants to foreclose on its $31 million in loans given to finance CL’s 2007 expansion and purchase of Washington City Times and the Chicago Reader. That action was blocked when CL filed for bankruptcy court protection under Chapter 11 of the federal code in September 2008.

“Washington City Times”?

Again, this is from the flagship of the Creative Loafing chain.

“Washington City Times”?

A couple of weeks back, I reported in this space that my bosses in the Creative Loafing chain of alt-weeklies cut my pay to ease the company’s cash crunch. Seemed like the right thing to do: The pay cuts affected the top people at corporate plus the “publishing teams”—editors, publishers, top ad people—at the various papers themselves. Better to extract some cash from the top earners than to lay off reporters.

Now I’m wondering why the cuts were necessary to begin with: Our company’s market value, I learn this evening, is going through the roof. That’s according to a hired “valuator” who gave testimony in Creative Loafing’s ongoing bankruptcy case in Tampa. Here’s the scoop on this valuation thing, as reported by CL’s own Wayne Garcia:

Creative Loafing’s valuation expert, Michael Mard of Tampa’s Financial Valuation Group of Florida, testified through all of Tuesday afternoon about his assessment that the chain absorbed most of its losses and revenue declines before its Sept. 29, 2008, Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. He put the value of the company at $7 million on Sept. 30; $12 million on Dec. 31, 2008; and $13 million by February of this year.

Holy cow—in the middle of the greatest financial crisis in however many decades, and the greatest biz-model crisis ever to affect newspapers, our very own company has nearly doubled in value. Quick–someone call Romenesko!

Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to another installment of Freedom Friday. Before we get started, I’d like to throw something out there: GeoPet. Can y’all feel that contraction bustle off your palate, like so many Metro riders leaving the Georgia Avenue-Petworth station? I can. Petworth needs this, folks. Why should AdMo, CoHi, and BloMi have all the fun? It would be so much easier to give directions, too: “The Looking Glass Lounge? Oh, it’s one block south of GeoPet”; “I’m going to grab some groceries at the GeoPet Safeway“; “Hey, let’s meet for lunch at Sweet Mango–it’s across the street from GeoPet.” Gah, so cool! Hey, Prince of Petworth, what do you say? Gonna throw your blog behind this one?

The American Enterprise Institute’s financial woes, Campus Progress‘ smear campaign, and creationists at the Smithsonian below the jump.

Read More “Our Morning Roundup: The GeoPet Proposal” »

Representatives of Washington City Paper’s parent company, Creative Loafing Inc., are today sitting through what is shaping up like a marathon hearing in a Tampa bankruptcy court, according to Wayne Garcia, a correspondent for our sister paper in Tampa. At issue is ownership of the company: Creative Loafing declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall after falling behind in debt payments to its principal lender, Atalaya Capital Management LP.

Atalaya, which is owed $31 million, is seeking to take control of the company and, according to Garcia, is pledging to invest more heavily in the product if it’s allowed to do so. An Atalaya rep, reports Garcia, said his firm “would be willing to spend more money to increase revenues at the newspaper chain, but only if it can displace the current management and ownership….Atalaya would seek to publish ‘a quality publication’ in order to maximize its investment.”

In a moment of sheer irony, Atalaya pointed the court to comments on “blogs” as evidence that workers in the Creative Loafing chain were demoralized. A lawyer representing Creative Loafing objected to the admission of such evidence, and the court agreed to disallow it. So there you have it: The publisher of numerous blogs objects to their inclusion in the court record.