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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Former Octopus Owner Having Trouble in Dayton, OH |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul R.
Email: paul (nospam) mediageek.org (unverified!)
Address: Still Urbana |
06 Jun 2002
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According to the Dayton, OH Daily News, the employees of Yesse Communications owned Dayton Impact Weekly have not been paid since May 1. Yesse was the former owner of C-U's weekly, C-U Cityview, then known as the Octopus. |
Those who like having a weekly newspaper in town should be at least somewhat thankful that the Octopus was bought out from the grasp of Yesse Communications last year after that company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Yesse's weekly newspapers in other small Midwestern cities aren't so lucky.
The most recent casualty looks to be the Impact Weekly of Dayton, Ohio. According to an article in the Dayton Daily News (http://www.activedayton.com/ddn/business/0605impact.html) the paper's staffers haven't been paid since May 1, which could make this week's edition of the paper its last.
Indianapolis based Yesse has shuttered weeklies in two other college towns, Iowa City and Bloomington, IN.
The Octopus was bought by Saga Communications of Grosse Point, MI, which also owns three local radio stations: WLRW, WKIO and WIXY. The paper is now known as the C-U Cityview.
For its part, Yesse blames poor ad revenue and difficulty in collecting payment from advertisers.
Indeed, the financial troubles of these smaller weekly newspapers may be symptomatic of the consolidation and mainstreaming of the alternative weekly industry in general. Fewer independent weeklies exist as they get bought up by larger owners or get squeezed out of business.
These effects are likely to only grow if the FCC revokes its ban on cross-ownership of newspapers and television stations, which would allow companies like Sinclair Communications, owner of WICD-TV Ch. 15 (and which has sued the FCC over ownership restrictions), to snap up any of the local papers in East-Central Illinois with impunity. |
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