Village Voice has new owner with longstanding newspaper ties

First they left the Village.

According to USA Today, NYC newspaper The Village Voice has a new owner.

Terms of the sale were not immediately disclosed.

Barbey bought The Village Voice for an undisclosed sum through his investment company Black Walnut Holdings LLC, which is separate from the company that runs the Reading newspaper.

Voice Media Group announced Monday that it has sold its flagship title to a company controlled by investor Peter Barbey of the Reading Eagle Company, a family-owned business that says it has been publishing newspapers since 1796.

The Village Voice, the iconic New York alternative newsweekly co-founded by Norman Mailer, has been sold to a private company, changing hands for the second time in three years.

Barbey said in a statement that he would “expand resources, coverage and reach, in print and online”.

Following the transition period, the two groups will continue to produce and share film and TV coverage, and the Voice will continue to offer its advertisers VMG’s web and digital agency services, operated through its V Digital Services subsidiary. “Many publications have stripped their content”.

The other side of his family controls the publicly-traded lifestyle clothier VF Corporation (Nautica, Jansport, Wrangler, Timberland, Lee, Vans, etc.) and is ranked no. 48 on Forbes’ list of America’s richest families.

The move is the latest in a series of sell-offs at VMG.

The paper was acquired by Phoenix-based New Times Media in 2005, which started an era of volatility characterised by repeated downsizings and forced or voluntary departures of just about all the old-time, high-profile veteran talent that made the Voice what it was.