The parent company of the Downtown Express has been sold to a business executive with experience in information technology and e-commerce.
“I was looking for something in New York that had quality and integrity behind it,” Jennifer Goodstein said of purchasing Community Media, LLC, effective July 31.
The award-winning newspaper chain also includes The Villager, Gay City News, Chelsea Now and the East Villager, and was owned for the past 13 years by John W. Sutter.
“John has maintained, over the years, a very strong reputation of having a place where people can find a trusted source of what’s happening,” Goodstein said. “I do feel that, looking at the condition of the papers — I think the hard work is done.”
Goodstein was a key e-business executive at MetLife for ten years. Prior to that, she was director of information technology for instruction and curriculum at a Maryland school district.
Commenting that New York City is “anything but vanilla,” Goodstein said that “the diversity” of the neighborhoods and the issues the group’s newspapers cover is a compelling factor in her interest in assuming control of the properties.
Asked what he was most proud of during his tenure, Sutter, who is 62, said, “Working with a group of committed professionals who believe in community journalism. Covering the best neighborhoods in the entire world. Trying to write fairly, forcefully, and independently about events that have meaning in the lives of our readers, week in and week out.”
Goodstein, 47, is married to Les Goodstein, who is a senior vice president at News America Inc. They live in Manhattan and have a college-age son, Steven.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Sutter purchased The Villager and Downtown Express from Elizabeth and Tom Butson in 1999. Sutter took the Downtown Express weekly in the decade after 9/11 because, as he said, “People in a disaster zone desperately need information.”
Sutter’s tenure at Community Media was a dynamic and active one, during which he substantially expanded the community newspaper franchise in Lower Manhattan. He launched three more papers: Gay City News in 2002; Chelsea Now in 2006; and the East Villager/Lower East Sider in 2010. All of these papers are thriving today.
Under Sutter, Community Media publications garnered their share of awards, with the papers regularly being acknowledged as among the top five newspaper groups in New York State. Over the past 12 years, Community Media has won more than 200 awards for excellence in the New York Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest across a wide range of categories, including The Villager’s three times winning the Stuart Dorman Award as the best community weekly in the state. This past year the newspaper group was honored with 27 awards for excellence.
Among the most memorable, big stories during his ownership of the papers, Sutter said, were “9/11; the recovery and rebuilding of Lower Manhattan after the attack; N.Y.U.’s expansion; the building out of Hudson River Park, and its trials and tribulations; the Pier 40 sagas; St. Vincent’s plan to build a new hospital tower and its ultimate bankruptcy and collapse; the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York State; the school overcrowding crisis; the dynamic expansion of influence and competence of our local community boards; real estate developments; the rezoning of the East Village and Lower East Side; new faces in politics — Margaret Chin and Daniel Squadron — and familiar faces, too — Christine Quinn, Tom Duane, Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, Rosie Mendez, Sheldon Silver and Deborah Glick; the redevelopment of Washington Square and a dozen other parks. The list goes on and on.”
Sutter mentioned he was particularly proud of the work that the staff of the Downtown Express accomplished over a ten-year period covering the recovery and rebuilding of the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan. The staff produced over 1700 stories chronicling this most complex building project in the world.
Sutter has agreed to stay on at the newspapers as Publisher Emeritus, although he quipped that sounds “really old.” He will assist the new leadership in the transition.
