In the world of alternative press, this is big news: two of the industry’s most venerated titles, the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper, have been sold to Creative Loafing, an Atlanta-based alt weekly company. Along with this acquisition, the company also received an undisclosed amount of mezzanine funding from BIA Digital Partners, the media PE firm. Creative Loafing, which was founded in 1973, now has weeklies and websites in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Sarasota, Tampa and Washington, D.C. The company now wants to use the new money to expand in the online media space, with “significant investment and expansion plan for our interactive assets”. Details in release.

Forbes: The terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed, although Reader co-founder and President Bob Roth said that the sale price was “an eight-figure number.”  Also, some background: most of the consolidation of once locally owned alt press has been the handiwork of New Times, which took the name of Village Voice Media in 2005 after merging with that company.