Brian Calle is slowly building a mini media empire with his purchase of the Bay Area’s Marina Times and New York’s iconic Village Voice newspapers last month, the latter deal bookending his Street Media’s presence on both sides of the country.
Calle—a Chapman University professor, board member of the OC Business Council, former opinion editor of the Southern California News Group (which includes the Orange County Register), and current publisher and CEO of LA Weekly—made waves with his two purchases, in particular that of the shuttered New York alternative weekly.
More’s in store. Calle says he is considering additional acquisitions and the planned launch this year of a new publication.
That new title’s launch would mark the fifth in Irvine-based Street Media’s fold after LA Weekly, Irvine Weekly and the pair of December deals.
In the near term, Calle’s prepping for the Village Voice’s comeback this month, following the deal that, like the Marina Times, was announced just ahead of the Christmas holiday.
With the relaunch of the New York publication, Calle will start first with digital, followed by a podcast and quarterly print publication.
“I kept seeing that there was newspaper after newspaper that was closing and I literally stopped counting it at 270 newspapers that had closed, whether they were small, super hyperlocal newspapers or weeklies,” Calle said of what he saw play out in the industry last year that inspired the deal.
He said he couldn’t stop thinking about the closures and thought he had a good solution for the New York paper, which he said will fill the void in covering local stories and serving as the guide to restaurants, clubs, art and other points of interest for residents and visitors to the city, noting demand for that publication’s content will come back in full force once stay-at-home orders lift.
“There’s just going to be an explosion and desire to do things, and I feel like having a brand like the Voice there to help people and guide them on where to go and what’s going on, the cool stories and people doing interesting things and innovative things, it’s going to be so necessary,” Calle said.
The acquisition from Village Voice Publisher Peter D. Barbey was on undisclosed terms, as was that of San Francisco’s Marina Times, a 36-year-old newspaper whose prior owners were reported to be Publisher Earl Adkins and Editor in Chief Susan Reynolds.
Recent History
The Village Voice, the country’s best-known alternative newspaper, was founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Edwin Fancher and Norman Mailer. It closed in 2018.
Calle’s unsure of how large the editorial staff could grow to be upon its relaunch, pointing out that will depend on revenue, but said “the sky is the limit in terms of size.”
“For me, I’ll finance the first brick and lay the first brick so that we have a baseline infrastructure in place, but in terms of each additional brick we lay…that’s going to be dependent on community support and certainly revenue,” he said of building out the editorial staff.
He said that history—his own chiefly—has taught him that going into an organization and spending a large amount of money to hire people, in hopes revenue eventually floats the organization, hasn’t been the best strategy.
Street Media acquired the assets of the LA Weekly in 2017, followed by the well-publicized shedding of much of the editorial staff, an advertising boycott, and a subsequent lawsuit from Weekly co-owner David Welch for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. A confidential settlement was reached in 2019.
Irvine Weekly was launched by Calle in 2018. Its primary competitor in the region, OC Weekly, shuttered in 2019 after a 24-year run.
The Business Model
Calle’s platform agnostic in his quest for revenue streams.
Feature films and documentaries could be in the cards outside of print, digital and the podcast for the Voice in a bid for a diversified revenue stream. Additionally, events, which have been done for Street Media’s other publications, are another possible form of revenue.
“No one has really figured out a great [business] model especially for local newspapers and local media outlets to make them sustainable and I think we have to start thinking about that in those terms because they’re important,” Calle said. “There’s no easy answer here. I’ve said out of the gate that there’s no silver bullet, but I’m young and I’m very interested in figuring it out.”
Pre-COVID, LA Weekly and Irvine Weekly both saw revenue split roughly even between digital and print, Calle said. That shifted last year to between 60% and 70% coming from digital with Calle adding, “digital will certainly be a leader for the Voice and the Marina Times in years to come.”
The key, he said, is finding and retaining a loyal readership.
“One of the things I’ve found in running LA Weekly and then starting Irvine Weekly a couple years ago is that if you can find a small group of people who just genuinely care about the community in which they live and they believe that for these communities to thrive, they need someone telling the stories about how good and great these communities can be and sharing the culture so that, not only for people that live in the community, there’s a common thread and common understanding about cultures, but also for people coming to visit. For us, that’s been really helpful and powerful.”
Calle’s strategy hits on a point a new wave of media sources seek to focus on, which is filling the local coverage gaps left open by general interest, major metropolitan newspapers covering mostly national and global news.
The Future
Calle’s optimistic in his outlook on journalism.
It’s why additional acquisitions could be in the cards for Street Media. The executive said Street Media was approached throughout 2020 by several media companies looking to sell and that has increased since news of the acquisitions of the Village Voice and Marina Times.
“We’ve looked at way more than we’ve acted on, but most certainly we’re going to continue to look and see if there’s anything,” he said.
Calle went on to say, “We’re open to all sorts of publications. I think, for me, the factors I typically look at are brand equity. Do people love and respect the brand? That’s a big one for me. The communities in which they’re located. Is there something special for that community? Then there’s the business considerations. Is the business clean? Has it been run well? And then, of course, what talent comes along with it? What’s the team look like and what are their abilities?”
The launch of another publication this year is certain, although its coverage area will be outside the state.
“There is another market outside of California that we are very interested in and have a lot of deep ties to that community,” Calle said. “So, we’ll definitely be doing something there.”
The new publication will be more focused on digital and will also have a podcast element Calle said would allow the title to go more in depth on stories.
Teaching Lessons
The modes of storytelling for this new outlet speak to some of the skillsets Calle sees journalists in the future likely needing. It’s a topic of conversation he said he has often in the courses he teaches each semester at Chapman University.
“I think that, especially for students who are coming out of either communications programs or journalism programs, that you have to recognize the trends and the behaviors of people who are consuming media,” Calle said. “And media consumption has completely changed just in the 15 or so years that I’ve been in this industry and certainly the four decades I’ve been on this planet.”
Still, Calle said he’s the balance of old and new schools of thought for the profession, with perspectives and opinions staying out of stories even as the number of platforms being used to tell those stories expands.
“People consume on multiple platforms so you have to be on all of them,” he said. “You have to be not only a good researcher and reporter and also a good writer, but you need to be able to post on social media. You need to be able to talk on a podcast and you probably need to be comfortable going on video. The more places you are, the more people are going to read and thus be impacted by the stories you’re telling.”
