Local Newspaper Calls It Quits

The City Paper will cease publication with its Friday, Aug. 9 issue, after 13 years of operation.

“In the last few days, we made the difficult decision to stop publishing The City Paper,” says Chris Ferrell, CEO of SouthComm. “After years of being subsidized by our investors and other Southcomm publications, we finally determined that there was not enough advertiser support for the free newsweekly model we were trying to sustain. The model proved very popular with readers, but in publishing the revenue doesn’t necessarily follow the readership.”

A portion of the staff will be laid off. Others will be reassigned to other SouthComm publications.

“Going forward we will be merging some of our editorial resources into our profitable publications in Nashville in an effort to make them even stronger,” Ferrell said. “You will see some of the names you have grown familiar with in The City Paper in the masthead of the Nashville Scene and Nashville Post. Both publications will expand their news coverage to fill the gap left by the closing of The City Paper. David Boclair will continue his coverage of Nashville sports, for example.”

The City Paper, founded by Brian Brown, launched in 2000 as a free publication, available Monday through Friday. SouthComm — owner of the Scene, Post, nFocus and other publications — purchased the paper from the Thompson family in 2008; the paper eventually became a weekly publication.