City Pages is a tabloid newspaper serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It features news, film, theatre and restaurant reviews, and music criticism, available free every Wednesday. The newspaper is published by Village Voice Media, a 16-paper alternative weekly chain based in Phoenix, Arizona.
On August 1, 1979, publishers Tom Bartel and Kristin Henning debuted Sweet Potato, a monthly newspaper focused on the Twin Cities music scene. The first issue featured pop band The Cars on the cover. In October 1980, Sweet Potato went biweekly. On December 3, 1981, the newspaper went weekly and was renamed City Pages. City Pages competed for readership with The Twin Cities Reader until 1997, when Stern Publishing purchased City Pages in March and The Twin Cities Reader the following day, shuttering it immediately. Bartel and Henning left City Pages in the fall of 1997. Tom Bartel's brother Mark was named publisher after Bartel and Henning's departure. City Pages was one of seven alt-weeklies owned by Stern, including the Village Voice. On October 24, 2005, New Times Media announced a deal to acquire Village Voice Media, creating a chain of 17 (now 16) free weekly newspapers around the country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million and controlling a quarter of the weekly circulation of alternative weekly newspapers in North America. After the deal's completion, New Times took the Village Voice Media name.
Circulation for City Pages is 25.4% of the Twin Cities market. 110,000 print copies are produced each week for a weekly readership of 329,800. Gender breakdown: Male 52.9% (print) 49% (online), Female 47.1% (print) 51% (online).
Web editor Jeff Shaw, noted food columnist Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, staff writers Jonathan Kaminsky and Jeff Severns Guntzel—among many others—left in 2008.