Last year, Time Out New York had aspirations of building up its online event listings into a sort of Craigslist of North American listings. The magazine invested in its website in pursuit of this, but the project never completely panned out. But according to some tipsters, that might just be the start of TONY's problems. Could the stalwart around-town manual be in (*dramatic pause*) life-threatening financial trouble? The rumor's not a complete surprise—we were reporting last year that some freelancers were having trouble getting paid by TONY. Our tipsters, though, say that's just a symptom of more serious money problems for publisher Allison Tocci and company:

Middle management has been instructed to reduce operating cost by whatever means necessary. They owe so much money across all their major vendors that it's just a matter of time before something bad happens - vendors have already stared black listing TONY from doing business with them, because of their delinquent account practices. TONY has seriously hurt themselves in the eyes of many vendors by not been more proactive towards reducing their ever-increasing debt.

Last year's investment in the website may have sucked away cash that could have been used to pay down debts, our tipster says, and some freelancers haven't been paid "in months." From another tipster:

Time Out NY is in such a critical financial quagmire that insiders speculate that it won't make it to the end of the year. Vendors and some freelancers have not been paid for two years, and that's probably a conservative number. Some of those vendors, including paper suppliers and printers, are ready to stop doing business with TONY until they pay up the hundreds of thousand that they are owed.

Whatever the case, there's certainly some animosity against management and their financial decisions over the past year or two. Any of you had trouble getting paid, or know more about TONY's situation? Email us.