St. Louis alt-weekly Riverfront Times sold, lays off all staff (2024)

ST. LOUIS— The Riverfront Times,St. Louis' alternative weekly newspaper,has been sold and its entire staff laid off, several employees said Wednesday on social media posts and to the Post-Dispatch.

Riverfront Times Executive Editor Sarah Fenske said she was told Wednesday morning by the publication’s owner, Chris Keating of Big Lou Holdings, that a sale had closed Tuesday evening and she and the staff no longer had jobs. The buyer is undisclosed and did not attempt to speak to any of the staff before laying them off, she said.

“I have no idea who this buyer is,” Fenske said in an interview from the mostly empty RFT offices Wednesday.

Fenske said she knew Keating had been looking for a buyer for the RFT and she had “been concerned for a little while” about its financial health.

Big Lou’s other publications — St. Louis food publication Sauce Magazine, Detroit Metro Times, Cincinnati CityBeat and LEO Weekly of Louisville, Kentucky — will continue uninterrupted, as will the quarterly LGBTQ publication Out In STL.

The Riverfront Times had six full-time newsroom employees, plus one part time staffer, as of Wednesday morning, Fenske said. Two weeks ago, it laid off two other reporters.

“It is just heartbreaking to me,” she said. “I loved this paper and I think we did really good work.”

Keating, who lists a Richmond Heights address, did not return requests for comment.

The Riverfront Times was founded in 1977 and published a print edition once a week.

And for decades, the paper was respected and beloved for a mix of hard-hitting long-form journalism, edgy features, robust bar and restaurant coverage and page after page of classifieds — sometimes quite racy ones.

Founder Ray Hartmann said the publication aimed to question the assumptions of mainstream media outlets and release information about the live music scene. It fought teardowns of historic buildings, and put a spotlight on issues like the flow of corporate dollars into the Veiled Prophet Fair.

Hartmann, currently a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District seat, now held by U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Town and Country, was shocked to hear the news Wednesday. He founded the publication after graduating from the University of Missouri journalism program and running the Maneater, the student newspaper there, for four semesters. He no longer has any role at the Riverfront Times.

"I think most people would agree, we were an important part of the St. Louis community for 46 years," he said. "I like to think we helped a lot of people... and did a lot to, not only to inform people, but challenge the status quo."

But the newspaper industry's move online, and the impact that had on alt-weeklies specifically, began to quickly erode the financial base of the publications, and a string of consolidations started.

In 1998, Hartmann and co-owner Mark Vittert sold the paper to national alternative weekly publisher New Times Media.

In 2012, executives from competitor Village Voice Media formed their own company, Voice Media Group, and bought New Times' papers.

In 2015, Euclid Media Group bought the RFT from Voice.

Then, last summer, Euclid dissolved and the paper was sold to Keating, then the chief operating officer of Euclid, and his new company, Big Lou Holdings.

In October, Keating also bought Sauce Magazine, a publication dedicated to local St. Louis food and drink. It had gone fully digital the April prior.

Sauce's six full-time employees were retained, the company said then.

Recently, the RFT had a circulation of 55,000, its website said.

David Carson of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.