Can “Creative Loafing” be Productive?
The AJC reports that Atlanta’s go-to guide for events and entertainment has new owners. A bankruptcy judge in Tampa, Florida, awarded Creative Loafing, an alternative weekly newspaper with editions in Atlanta and five other U.S. cities, not to the family that has published the paper for the past 37 years (the Easons), but instead to the company’s largest creditor - Atalaya Capital Management LP – a New York-based private equity company.
Atalaya’s bid dwarfed the competing bid from Ben Eason, the newspaper’s CEO. Eason offered $2.3 million, while Atalaya more than doubled it to $5 million. Creative Loafing filed for bankruptcy last September to avoid defaulting on loans, including debts owed to Atalaya of $30 million.
Launced by Eason’s mother, Deborah, in 1972 in Atlanta, Creative Loafing is now based in Tampa, Florida. Caryl E. Delano, a bankruptcy judge in Tampa was not persuaded by Eason’s years of experience in running the company. Delano rejected Eason’s request to buy the counter-culture weekly at auction.
As mainstream newspapers suffered with the economy and the increasing amount of Internet readership, Creative Loafing was not immune. The number of loyal readers plunged, and debts continued to mount.
For now, Atalaya plans to keep Creative Loafing in a forward direction. It plans to take over operations immediately, and will meet today to build a strategy for increased readership and, ultimately, to turn a profit.
Hopefully this will breathe some new life into a stagnant publication. It’s regrettable that the family that brought the paper up from birth has been replaced, but as history has shown, continued regimes do not always bring stability, especially financial stability.
For better or worse, CL is much more than a go-to guide for Atlanta events. Given that the AJC has shed employees the past several years faster than a wet dog shakes off water, CL’s investigative reporting staff- in particular, Kevin Willis, Mara Shalhoup, and John Sugg- remained among the few journalists who investigated stories- especially stories involving questionable practices by Coca-Cola, Southern Company, and other major local AJC ad-buyers.
The day that CL fired Ken Edelstein, CL did start to lose a lot of readers. But Ken now has his own blog, as do numerous other sharp investigative journalists who were erstwhile employees of the AJC or CL.
Sadly, when we really want to know what’s going on in Georgia politics, I have to read about 6-8 sources instead of 2-3.
In addition to the AJC’s excellent but incomplete political reportage, other Georgia newspapers, and CL’s website, here are some places to start:
Maria Saporta’s “Saporta Report”: http://saportareport.com/blog/
Atlanta Unfiltered (Jim Walls, former AJC reporter and public records sleuth extraordinaire):
http://www.atlantaunfiltered.com/
Ken Edelstein (former CL editor) blog:
http://atlantaunsheltered.com/category/ken-edelsteins-personal-blog/
Drifting through the Grift:
http://griftdrift.blogspot.com/
Peach Pundit (partisan and often paid hacks, but still good for an ocassional read):
http://www.peachpundit.com/
Just another example of the man at work. j/k
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