"The Somerville News Weekly" ? What exactly is this?

[ron_newman]

So, The Somerville News became The Somerville Times last month ... but now there's apparently a new competing "Somerville News Weekly" which supposedly debuted a print edition last week? (They also have this Facebook page)

Has anyone actually seen a copy of this? I haven't found one anywhere around Davis Square. It appears that the two former co-owners of The Somerville News had some sort of split, with one of them getting the assets, archive, and continuity of the former paper, but the other one keeping rights to the paper's old name.

The "News Weekly" folks also have some strange idea, or perhaps delusion, that they are operating a 70-newspaper chain of local weeklies.

If any of you understand what's going on here, please comment.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

The Boston version, at least, seems to be more or less a Microsoft Word document that someone has converted to HTML, with the unlikely document title "EVERETT NEWS WEEKLY.com".

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I looked into the Waltham edition. It contained no news, but it did contain a political endorsement with two usage errors:

Boston News Group and It's Seventy Cities and Town's Endorse Stephen Lynch for US Senate

[beinneighe.livejournal.com]

The front-page (er, top-of-list) news articles for Cambridge have some great advice about not getting heat exhaustion in this crazy heat wave we're having. I'm not too worried about a news organization that can't find anything to write about for Cambridge, MA, over the last 3 months becoming a dominant player.

[blacktigr.livejournal.com]

I found a copy in my Somerville-based gym. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen in print. Between the no-content articles, the spelling mistakes and add some of the weirdest white-space-filling techniques I've seen since the college student newspaper I was once involved with, I was not impressed.

[ron_newman]

On page 2 of this week's paper, publisher Billy Tauro lists places where we can pick up his paper, such as the Magoon Square Dunkin Donuts and the Clairton Hill bus stop.

[craigindaville.livejournal.com]

If you look on the main page for the "paper" you'll see an open letter asking for advertisers, and the publisher identifies himself as Billy Tauro. So I assume that he was either pushed out from the Somerville News or left on his own to start this new enterprise.

[ron_newman]

That's new as of today. Tauro used to also own Pat's Tow, though I think he has since sold or divested it.

The Somerville Times, which moderates all comments, allowed this one through. It makes some pretty wild accusations against Tauro, which I won't repeat here. (I've had enough of libel suits this year, thank you.)

[ron_newman]

Also on the new paper's home page right now is an announcement that James Norton will be writing a weekly column.

James Norton used to edit the Somerville News, and was a one-term member of the Somerville school committee before being defeated for re-election. He is the son of Don Norton, who owns Norton Realty in Ball Square, which the Somerville Times still uses as its business address. James Norton and I have had some ... memorable dust-ups both here on DSLJ and on the comment section of the News. I get the impression that there has been some big-time family breakup.

[craigindaville.livejournal.com]

Part of me was thinking that this change at the News/Times would mean a little more editorial integrity, but the comments allowed, as well as the general tone of the News Talk section being commented on ("We hear that someone in some department has done some bad things, but won't give details here except to possibly smear an unnamed person who can be figured out easily enough if we drop enough hints here...").

So, the bottom line seems to be: Somerville News changes name and some ownership, keeps same nasty, snarky, personal-attacking vibe. At the same time, several cast-offs from this paper start their own snarky, poorly-written, and probably nasty paper to compete.

Meanwhile, they will both complain loudly about how "bad" the Somerville Journal is, I bet.