August 30th, 2005, 2:34 pm

New Times, Village Voice merger to affect other alts online?

The New Times and Village Voice groups are merging — no news, that. But when VVM honcho Schneiderman takes over the Internet operations, as the SF Bay Guardian has reported, it’s likely that the New Times websites will undergo some changes … and more likely than not, the sites will change to be more like the (awesome and badass) VillageVoice.com than like the NT sites, which have been stagnant in recent years.

So what does this mean for the rest of us alts? Well, NT sites have used Dispatch web publishing tools for several years — a company that CL has good dealings with for years. By far, the NT papers are their biggest clients — so if Schneiderman pulls the NT sites away from Dispatch (as seems likely, eventually), that’ll result in a big loss for Dispatch.

It’s not clear what this will mean, of course, but it’s worth pointing out that the majority of alts with web presences use the Dispatch publishing system.