SF Weekly is owned by a national corporation of similarly sheek newspapers (I believe it's called Village Voice Media). Anyway, Guardian accuses SF Weekly of monopolisticly charging below-market rates for ads (I believe) in a bid to force the Guardian into the toilet (because, of course, the free weeklies are paid for by advertising).

The Guardian points out the company that owns the SF Weekly also owns a bunch of other papers in the Bay Area and that this gives them too much market power over advertising rates.

Luckily, the East Bay Express recently went independent again (after leaving the same company that owns the SF Weekly, I believe) so now we have TWO indepedent newspapers in the Bay Area (at least)! Woo

In any event: ALWAYS remember that the Guardian is local and independent... the SF Weekly is not.

SF Weekly interviewed me today, I cant complain about them.

In the spirit of being a good neighbor -- Guardian is right by my small, shitty, apartment -- I cant complain about them.

I guess Im neutral, or maybe I just dont care.

As someone who reads both papers and isn't beholden to either of them, and based on everything I've read on the case, SF Weekly doesn't have a leg to stand on. Their air of smug condescension has always turned me off somewhat, but combined with the poor reasoning and ad hominem attacks that essentially comprise their attacks on the SFBG in this and other cases, I'm starting to wonder why I bother reading the Weekly anymore. I certainly wouldn't pay for it if I had to.

This is really just a tempest in a teapot that keeps the front page editorials coming.

But don't imagine for a minute that the SFBG actually stands for its principles. For some perspective on the SFBG's hypocrisy on another issue, check out these oldies but goodies:

http://www.uncanny.net/~wsa/sfbg1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Guardian#Anti-unionism_in_employment

Both papers are boring.

The internet has basically demolished their ability to provide unique information. There's one article per issue for the most part, and the Guardian usually tries to make me feel bad for enjoying life in the Bay Area, the Weekly tends to make me feel entirely uncool. Neither is a great lunchtime read.

they used to be good for exclusive concert listings, now the internet feeds them to my email inbox days before the weekly comes out with their full page spread. They don't show more than a week or two worth of concert dates anyway, and if the show's slightly popular it's sold out by the time it's in the papers.

classifieds? I've got craigslist thanks. Salacious porn ads in the back? I've got the internet!

I guess the editorials are nice, but they're always in this bizzare split page nonsense (you'd think print would eventually mature into a competing format for the internet where people expect a full story on a single page...)

I personally wouldn't mind if they both went away. I think their real usefulness has been served elsewhere.

It's true. I only read the Weekly for Savage Love. I can't remember the last time I read the Guardian.

Add to the earlier explanations: the SF Weekly is accused of setting ad rates well below cost and using corporate funds (from the profitable papers in the New Times chain) to continue operating the Weekly until, theoretically, the Guardian would go out of business, and the Weekly could raise ad rates and be profitable, even more profitable as they'd be the only San Francisco alt-weekly.

The Weekly is claiming that they did not do this. They are also arguing that the real negative impact to the Guardian was the dot-com bust, the internet (Craigslist specifically), and the economic downturn, and that it wasn't just the Guardian that suffered, but all print media, citing the Chronicle's huge losses. I'm not sure whether in order to win the Guardian has to prove intent or demonstrate a conclusive pattern of predatory pricing. The Weekly's lawyers have been trying to pick apart the Guardian's assertions by calling attention to cases of individual ad clients that were either charged more by the Weekly (instead of less) or dropped their ads in the Guardian because of "bad customer service" or didn't really stop advertising in the Guardian.

Neither paper is perfect. There are things I appreciate about both. I think the Guardian has better music and film writing - at least what they cover is more interesting to me. I like Annalee Newitz' column. The Guardian also has reviews and articles written by local musicians and writers that they are knowledgeable about. On a rare occasion I'll find this in the Weekly, but since the departure of Silke Tudor, the Weekly reminds me of a Pitchfork-reading dot-com yuppie that may genuinely like and research the largely out-of-town acts that pepper its pages, but doesn't really engage with the local underground community of artists and musicians that foster the culture. Instead, it's a bunch of hipster-bashing seemingly penned from the pristine halls of a lifestyle loft by someone who seems somewhat threatened by the people that hang out on the sidewalk with their friends who have been here longer. Again, not every Weekly writer comes off this way, but a lot of it does.

Some of the feature articles in the Weekly are good, and Matt Smith's column is worth reading, even if I regularly disagree with him.

And then there's the issue that a significant amount of the Weekly's cultural writing is done by out-of-towners - other writers from the Village Voice Media conglomerate. So, it isn't simply an issue of whether the money is coming from a local business or out of town, but everyone drawing that paycheck lives here.