The Weekly in Review

by Kevin Haney

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Published: Apr 10, 2007

After 20 years of running Philadelphia Weekly, with newspapers everywhere losing readers to digital competitors, Anthony Clifton is looking for an alternative to owning it. Using a New York City investment bank, Clifton in mid-March began looking for someone to buy the alternative weekly's parent company, Review Publishing. (His firm also publishes the Atlantic City Weekly and two neighborhood weeklies under the South Philadelphia Review banner.)

The bean-counting sorts in the media biz guesstimate PW's sale value at $10 million or a tad above, with the four pubs together probably worth about $15 million. Clifton didn't return calls last week seeking comment, but a New York investment bank, Jordan, Edmiston Group, began contacting prospective buyers about three weeks ago, media types said.

David Lipson, president of Philadelphia magazine, acknowledged that he looked at the paper's financials, but passed on any deal. He said a nondisclosure agreement prevented him from commenting further.

Others said to be interested buyers included Brian Tierney and his partners, who last year bought the Inquirer and Daily News, and Village Voice Media (VVM), the Phoenix-based chain that purchased New York's venerable Village Voice last year.

With a total of 17 papers and 1.8 million weekly circulation, the chain once known as New Times Media changed its name to VVM in homage its New York-based flagship. Tierney isn't talking about his possible interest, a spokeswoman said last week. (Also, a story posted on the Weekly's Web site last week debunked a blog posting indicating that the Weekly had already been sold to VVM, and noted that Richard L. Connor, editor and publisher of the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, is also in the bidding mix.)

The paper — the staff is said to be on edge as they await any sort of word about the purportedly looming sale, which has not been openly addressed in their offices — publishes more than 101,000 copies each week while its Atlantic City cousin puts more than 40,000 copies out on shore streets. The Weekly began life in 1971 as the Welcomat, aimed strictly at Center City.

Clifton, 60, an Englishman married to a daughter of Comcast honcho Ralph Roberts, bought Review Publishing in 1987, leaving a finance job at the cable conglomerate. He and wife Catherine are the papers' sole owners, he said in a 2005 interview. Welcomat officially morphed to alternative status in 1994 as Philadelphia Weekly, competing with City Paper, which dates back to 1981.

Alt-weeklies have almost been a sure bet nationwide since the Village Voice pioneered the genre some 50 years ago, but are now coming up against a wall, especially in big cities. Like the big dailies, the alts have faced stiff competition from Internet sites in the last five years, says Richard Karpel, executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Online classifieds such as Craigslist have cut into the hip metro weeklies' base of classified advertisers, especially when it comes to personal listings, he explained.

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