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Voice Media Group is a Denver-based private company that owns 11 alternative weekly newspapers throughout the United States.
Its flagship paper is the New York-based Village Voice, America’s oldest and largest alt-weekly. The company also owns many of the country’s other most prominent weeklies, including LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword, and the Phoenix New Times.
Until 2012, those papers had been owned by Village Voice Media, which consisted of six weeklies when it was sold in 2005 to New Times Media, a chain of 11 weeklies, in a deal that drew concern about increased corporate influence. The merged company took the Village Voice name.
Voice Media sold SF Weekly and Seattle Weekly to local owners in 2013.
By 2009, Village Voice’s papers had undergone significant cuts and layoffs, as well as another round in 2012. Two top Village Voice editors resigned when asked to make further staff cuts. In 2012, a new holding company named the Voice Media Group and staffed by former Village Voice executives bought Village Voice’s alt-weeklies, allowing the company to distance itself from Backpage, an ad site owned by Village Voice Media that has been a home for prostitution and human trafficking advertising.