City Paper to close after sale, Metro US says

Philadelphia City Paper will cease publication after a sale to Broad Street Media, the owners of Philadelphia Weekly, executivesat Metro USannounced Wednesday.

The last publication date of the ground-breaking alt-weekly will be Oct. 8.

“We were shocked to hear this news,” City Paper editor Lillian Swanson said. “I feel so badly that an important voice in Philadelphia is being silenced. We paid attention to stories that no one else did.

The alt-weekly industry — once known for their lusty ads offering adult services in the back and cutting edge journalism in the front — has been hard hit by the economic forces that have buffeted other media outlets.

From a high of 135 in 2009, the number of alt-weeklies has declined to 117.

Metro US — the publisher of this paper and two other free dailies in Boston and New York — bought City Paper last year for an undisclosed amount.

Terms of the sale to Broad Street Media were not disclosed.

The paper was widely known to be losing money, and company executives had said that they were closing the gap.

“We acquired it because we believe in newspapers,” Mortensen said in an interview. “We weren’t able to pull it off.”

City Paper was founded in 1981 and has won numerous awards.