It’s official: New Times, the Phoenix-based alt-weekly chain with 11 papers, will merge with Village Voice Media (VVM), a chain of six alt-weeklies that includes the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Seattle Weekly. The combined chain will have 17 papers.

The deal was confirmed by a top-level New Times executive tonight in a phone call. The exec described the deal as a merger. It will take a couple of months for the deal to be finalized, and they won’t “have the keys to the carâ€� until Christmas or the first of the year.

Moments after the phone call, a story went up on the New York Times website about the deal. The NYT described it like this:

The company that publishes the Village Voice and five other alternative newspapers is to announce today an agreement to be acquired by New Times Media, the largest publisher in the market.

Hm… a merger? Not according to the NYT. The VVM chain, including Seattle Weekly, is being “acquired,â€� says the NYT, which implies that New Times is in control and VVM was in a less powerful position than previously believed.

What’s it all mean? Well, the NYT frets that the sale of VVM will “undoubtedly raise questions about whether the Voice and its siblings can preserve their anti-establishment roots as part of a growing corporation.â€�

Excuse me? Prior to being purchased by New Times, VVM was owned by Goldman Sachs, Weisspeck & Greer, and Canadian Imperial. Prior to being owned by that collection of anti-establishment investment bankers, the Voice and its sibs (including Seattle Weekly) were owned by pet-food magnate—and billionaire investor—Leonard Stern. Prior to being owned by Stern, the Voice was owned by that right-wing whack-job Rupert Murdoch. With its purchase by New Times, the VVM chain will be owned by a smaller, more anti-establishment corporation than it has been in years.

What’s it mean for Seattle Weekly? I know for a fact that the New Times folks don’t think very highly of Seattle Weekly`s editorial content, editorial staffers, or the gap between Seattle Weekly`s towering self-regard and Seattle Weekly`s limp product. If I were a Weekly staffer, I would get my resumé out there—which is something many nervous Weekly staffers have already been doing. But the SW staffer with the dampest panties tonight? SW publisher Terry Coe, who used to be the publisher of Riverfront Times, a New Times paper in St. Louis. There’s no love lost between Coe and his old bosses, we hear.

What’s it mean for The Stranger? Seattle Weekly tried to spin the merger/acquisition as trouble for The Stranger in a self-serving piece a few months ago:

In Seattle, aggressive tactics by a merged company controlled by New Times could be trouble for The Stranger, the smaller, locally controlled weekly here.

The problem with this analysis is that the Weekly has been bought and sold twice already—and both times the new owners and old timers at the Weekly made the same prediction: The sale spelled doom for The Stranger. But today The Stranger is actually the larger weekly in Seattle (not the smaller paper—file that under wishful thinking), and predictions of The Stranger`s demise have been premature. As Josh Feit wrote in The Stranger…

This isn’t the first time the Weekly has predicted doom for The Stranger after a larger company bought up our competition: The same thing happened in 1997, when the Weekly was purchased by Stern Publishing, which owned the Village Voice. The result? The “endangeredâ€� Stranger grew and became more relevant while the Weekly started to slip. Before the Stern buyout, the Weekly averaged 37 pages larger per week than The Stranger. By 2000, three years later, the Weekly averaged only 10 pages larger per week than The Stranger.

In 2000, the Weekly was bought out a second time, when Stern sold his papers to VVM and its investment bankers, including Goldman Sachs and Weiss Peck & Greer. (Goldman Sachs is a huge contributor to George W. Bush, by the way.) The result? The “endangeredâ€� Stranger grew even more and the Seattle Weekly continued its decline. Today, the Weekly averages 7 pages smaller than The Stranger. Hey, check out last week’s papers, when the city’s biggest community event, Bumbershoot, fueled a 156-page Stranger and a 112-page Weekly. Every time a larger company has gobbled up the Weekly and tried to prop it up, The Stranger has emerged stronger than before.

Stranger publisher Tim Keck is certainly upbeat about the news:
“On a strictly personal level I think it’s going to be better,” he said. “I’ll have a brand-new competitor with a whole different lineup. Didn’t the Globetrotters get tired of the Washington Generals? I know I’ve tired of the killjoys on Western Avenue. It will be like getting new carpet in my office—a refreshing change.”