The City Paper is a free weekly newspaper serving Nashville, Tennessee. The City Paper began publication as a daily (Monday through Friday) paper on November 1, 2000, providing competition to The Tennessean, which was the only daily in town after the Nashville Banner closed in 1998. The City Paper started with a daily circulation of about 40,000 copies and was being delivered to homes. Within a month, home delivery was cut back to only paid subscribers and circulation was cut to 20,000. Initially The City Paper was projecting a 90,000 circulation.
On March 2, 2004, City Paper founder Brian Brown announced he was replacing himself as publisher with Tom Larimer, who was previously publisher of the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro. A few months later, Larimer resigned and Jim Ezzell was named interim publisher on July 16, 2004. Ezzell, who has served on The City Paper’s operating committee for three years, is the chief financial officer of Thompson Machinery Commerce Corp., whose owners are investors in the newspaper. On June 2, 2006, The City Paper announced that it had hired Albie Del Favero, publisher of the Nashville Scene, as its publisher. For three years, the executive editor was Clint Brewer, formerly managing editor of the Lebanon Democrat and a past national president of the U.S. Society of Professional Journalists.
As of June 2007, The City Paper reached an average of more than 250,000 unique readers each week, according to a media audit reported in the Nashville Scene. For comparison, the same article reported, the A-section of The Tennessean had at that time reached 365,700 readers weekly.
It was announced April 9, 2008, that Nashville-based SouthComm Communications purchased The City Paper. Members of the Thompson family -- of Thompson Machinery fame -- retain a significant minority stake in the paper. On April 28, 2008, The City Paper began publishing and distributing print editions only two days each week, though it continued daily updates to its website. SouthComm, headed up by former Nashville Scene publisher Chris Ferrell, also owns the Nashville Post and Business Tennessee magazine, as well as other media products.
In late 2009, the City Paper started publishing only on Mondays, and the Thursday edition was merged with the Nashville Scene.
Stephen George, who had previously been editor of LEO Weekly, another SouthComm-owned publication, became editor of The City Paper in January 2010.
In 2011, Steve Cavendish replaced Stephen George as editor when George left to work as U.S. Rep Jim Cooper's press secretary and then later for U.S. Rep John Yarmuth in the same capacity.
Famous quotes containing the words city and/or paper:
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)