Lost amidst all the hubbub about Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones is this little nugget: The little alternative weekly that could, the New York Press, got bought yesterday! Its new owners are "Manhattan Media." You may be familiar with their other publications, New York Family and AVENUE, not to mention a newish outfit called Our Town, Downtown. Doesn't that just sound so quaint! What's even quainter is that the new owners are going to merge Our Town, Downtown with the Press. Just when it seemed like it would be the perfect time for a real competitor to the New Times-ified Voice to emerge, the Press basically gets turned into a community paper. Then there are these reassuring words: "We also anticipate that most current New York Press employees will be joining the Manhattan Media family." (Does that include Martin Basroon, we wonder?) The full memo follows.

The woes of the New York Press are infamous—staff turnover, low morale, little money. (There's a plus side too—a crazy history, stunts sometimes gone right and also hilariously wrong, and always pluck and gritty determination.) While looking around at the men behind the weekly, we realized we knew nothing about New York Press's Chief Financial Officer, Martin Basroon. He's been at his duties since 2005, at the behest of a friend, Press owner David Unger, and he took that job pretty much right after his release from prison.