UPDATED: Riverfront Times: For Sale or Something Weirder?
Is the Riverfront Times back up for sale? If not, why did it move to a new web address? Where have many old articles gone? These are questions many on social media are asking, now that the site has moved to rftimes.com. The new site design is notable for having completely removed the words “Riverfront Times” from the logo. Another curiosity is that the copyright information now states “River Front Times”, instead of “Riverfront Times”. For years, the website’s copyright information said the latter. Archive.org’s Wayback Machine indicates that the migration to the new site began in late May. The original web address was still active through much of June. This would seem to show that the move was intentional and in process for some time.
As noted in a previous article, the former alt-weekly’s website appeared to stop adding new local news links some time back. The redesigned site has ditched both the local news links and OnlyFans reviews for the top of the page. In fact, OnlyFans content has completely disappeared from the site’s homepage. There is still a link to the “After Dark” section at the bottom of the page.
The new site sports a top section of featured articles, some of which date all the way back to 2012. Below that, Hazel Hawke, who some speculate is a pen name given to articles that are primarily written by AI, has begun generating new content for the site. Echoing Dead Internet Theory, the speculation that Hawke is a pen name is supported by the fact that there is almost no internet presence for a writer by that name. If she is real, then she doesn’t seem to have ever worked for another outlet. In recent months, almost no new articles appeared on the old RFT site. This has changed at the new address, which features content relating to the closing of Diddy’s trial and the AI-related controversy around The Velvet Sundown. As of this writing, there does not appear to be any advertising on the site.
Numerous former RFT writers have taken to social media to bemoan what appears to be a loss of older stories in the move to the new URL.
Interestingly, it appears that the new site includes content from ocweekly.com, which seems to be another defunct alt-weekly publication. This could point towards RFT own JD Davis having purchased other alt-weekly brands and content. A larger number of “Ask a Mexican” articles have appeared. They have been given more recent publication dates, but the text of the articles indicate that they are almost two decades old.
[UPDATE: Daniel Hill, a former RFT employee who is now working for St. Louis Magazine, reached out to clarify the presence of the ocweekly.com content. “The Ask a Mexican stuff was long part of the RFT’s archives. That column was syndicated across the chain when the paper was under the ownership of Voice Media Group, prior to the sale to Euclid Media Group, which Chris Keating co-owned before he had a falling out with his business partner… they split assets with Keating, with Big Lou Media getting the RFT in the divorce. (That’s, incredibly, named after a horse he owned, by the way.) So when the new buyer took ownership, they already had those articles. It’s very weird that they are surfacing them now, though I’m not entirely sure it’s intentional,” said the former RFT music editor.]
All of these changes beg the question: why? Abandoning the site’s longtime URL is a move that brands with a well-established web presence would be loath to do. One reasonable explanation is that the owner of the Riverfront Times brand is now considering selling the URL and copyright to another entity. The stripping of the name from the website, leaving only the familiar initials in block logo, means that the publication could be leaving the old moniker behind. It is possible that the change in copyright information was just a typo, but that seems unlikely. The changes appear to be intentional and could make space for another entity to assume ownership of the brand and old website address.
Given the reality that the brand is highly damaged, it is unclear who would be interested in purchasing it. It is also very unclear what valuation the brand could bring in a sale. Some of the strongest evidence against a sale is that older content has moved to the new address, though former RFT writers’ social media posts indicate that they believe many of their old articles have disappeared. If there were to be a sale, it would make sense that the buyer would be interested in the archives, as they are integral to the brand. If the new site is retaining ownership of this content, that would make a purchase that much less attractive. In the event the brand is sold, it is possible that this older content could be removed from the new site and returned to the rebooted media outlet.
A potential sale is also not the only explanation circulating among local media observers. Some have speculated that this could relate to a potential de-ranking by Google. In this scenario, the move to a new URL would be part of an attempt to trick the search engine into boosting the new site’s ranking and reach, using old articles with changed publication dates to trick the search engine into believing it was posting new content. This is supported by former authors noting that some of their articles appear to have been given new, recent publication dates, even if they were published years earlier. The addition of content from other defunct publications would give the site a library of old content to republish as “new”.
