Village Voice sold its soul, says NOW founder

Michael Hollett the co-founder of NOW magazine in Toronto has said in an article in the Toronto Star reflecting on the announced end of the printed Village Voice paper, that 

"The end of the Village Voice in print is not a statement about the state of publishing but a morality tale about what happens when a values-based business sells its soul."

 He says that the takeover of the original Village Voice by New Times.

"ripped the heart out of the alt weekly world. When we should have been savoring the glory years before the internet’s assault on our young readers, we were consumed by which of the two companies was courting us."

Hollett recalls that NOW was being courted as part of an extended empire of alt-weeklies, a bargain that NOW eventually walked away from  when conversations veered from journalism to a 35 per cent return on investment.