The recently announced merger between Village Voice Media and New Times Corp., the two biggest chains of alternative weeklies in the country, is bad news for alternative journalism. It's also likely to be bad news for the Seattle Weekly, owned by VVM.

New Times will have editorial control of the new company, which will be called Village Voice Media, and this is bad news for VVM properties like Village Voice, LA Weekly, and SW. New Times has a history, in its acquisitions, of blowing out the old editorial regime, no matter how profitable, and replacing it with a paper that more closely reflects its libertarian, neo-con corporate philosophy. New Times papers invest in investigative journalism, but carry very little else in the way of news or features in their papers. They don't endorse candidates and shy away from community involvement.

Hopefully New Times will leave Seattle Weekly alone; they'd be foolish to mess with what is a highly profitable paper. But that's been their MO in the past. And one of the most likely changes involves me. New Times doesn't like progressive politics, doesn't like political columns, and doesn't like freelancers; I read that to mean that my eight-year tenure at SW is in some jeopardy. Hopefully, not; hopefully they'll leave what has become a community institution alone. I'd like to stay at SW. But in the near future--not now, but soon--I may be asking you, dear readers, to let SW know if you value my presence in that paper. --Geov Parrish