"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

[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.