When the Village Voice was founded almost 50 years ago, it was about as anti-corporate as one could get back then, a journal of muckraking and discontent, and over the years it served as a beacon for all who protested.
       But over those same years the New York weekly of politics and the arts has become itself more corporate, moving from the hands of one plutocrat to another, often to the consternation of its left-leaning and woefully underpaid staff.
       Yesterday that transformation became complete with the sale of the publication to a group of investors who aspire to build a major chain of similar alternative newspapers around the country.
       At the helm will be David Schneiderman, a former editor at The New York Times who has served as the Voice's publisher in recent years.
     The investor group, led by Weiss, Peck & Greer, Wall Street money managers, paid around $170 million for the paper and six other media holdings of longtime owner Leonard Stern, the pet food mogul. 
    Stern bought the paper in 1985 from Rupert Murdoch for $55 million and then began accumulating other weeklies around the country, including the L.A. Weekly and five others, apparently with ambitions to build a larger chain. But last year Stern decided to sell when it became apparent that his children had no interest in taking over the business.
     A number of bidders were rumored to have stepped forth, including The New York Times.  But always in the background was Schneiderman, who eventually rounded up the necessary investors and capital.
     Schneiderman is expected to be succeeded as publisher by Arthur Howe, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who in recent years moved into alternative papers with the aim of building a chain.
   Schneiderman says the Voice's longtime editor, Donald Forst, will remain in that post as long as he chooses.
     Schneiderman says his first aim is to pick up more alternative papers. He also plans to expand into the web and radio.
       The Voice chain competes with The New Times chain, which is based in Phoenix.
         The voice was founded in 1955 by novelist Norman Mailer and two cronies and over the years it has grown to a free circulation of 225,000 and inspired alternatives in virtually every decent-sized city in the country, notably during the 1970s and the Vietnam war years.
        Consolidation of alternative weeklies has proceeded apace in recent years, and more rapidly in the past few, for several reasons. 
         While in their early years they had difficulty competing with daily newspapers because of their often leftist politics, they've slowly won acceptance in most communities as their politics moderated and advertisers turned to them because of their lower rates and reach among younger and increasingly affluent readers.
      But they've never been able to catch on as national ad vehicles. A driving force behind consolidation is the idea of creating national networks that will allow advertisers to reach major markets in one buy at rates far cheaper than they would pay for dailies.