Richmond's Style Weekly shuts down after nearly 39 years

[TexasTowelie]

After close to 39 years, the Richmond-based alternative weekly newspaper Style Weekly will shut down this week, Editor-in-Chief Brent Baldwin posted on Style’s Facebook page Tuesday.

The publication’s closing came three years after Norfolk-based Landmark Communications Inc. sold its Virginia newspapers — The Virginian-Pilot, Inside Business and Style Weekly — and their associated businesses for $34 million to Tribune Publishing Co. (then known as Tronc Inc.), which already owned the Daily Press in Newport News, as well as the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg and the Tidewater Review in West Point.

This May, Tribune Publishing was purchased by hedge fund Alden Global Capital in a $633 million deal that has led to the elimination of more than 250 full-time editorial positions through buyouts offered two days after the finalization of the deal, including at the Pilot and the Daily Press.

Even before Alden’s purchase, Tribune Publishing employment fell by 30%, from 4,114 employees at the end of 2019 to 2,865 at the end of 2020, according to a Chicago Tribune story.

Read more: https://www.virginiabusiness.com/article/richmonds-style-weekly-shuts-down-after-nearly-39-years/

[underpants]

1. Good publication over the years. Started about the time I moved here.

It was the go to for apartments rentals in an area of the city called The Fan. I knew people who’d take all the copies out of the distribution boxes so they had first and full access to listings. No real internet back then.