We've been following the saga of the San Francisco Bay Guardian vs SF Weekly, a couple of great alt-weeklies, for some time now. In March 2008, the Bay Guardian successfully sued the SF Weekly for predatory pricing — basically selling ads below market value in order to drive the smaller paper out of business.
The Guardian won $21 million in damages, and the SF Weekly hasn't been paying because they say the case is under appeal. The SF Weekly is owned by Village Voice Media, one of the giants in the industry, while the Bay Guardian is a small, independent paper with one of the scrappiest editors, Tim Redmond, I've ever met.
Last year, Redmond started to go after the Weekly's assets. And yesterday, a California Superior Court commission decided that the Bay Guardian is entitled to half of the SF Weekly's advertising revenue, which could be in the neighborhood of $200,000 a month.
Ouch.
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