AAN News
Alt-Weekly Art Director Closes His Squished Penny Museumnew
Washington City Paper's Pete Morelewicz and his wife Christine Henry have decided to close their collection of squished pennies to the public after running it out of the front hallway of their home for 11 years, the Washington Post reports. "We started to get so many visitors that we were overwhelmed," Morelewicz says. "We didn't have enough time to accommodate everyone who wanted to visit us. And that was really tough for them as well as for us, because we wanted to make people happy."
The Washington Post |
07-09-2007 12:29 pm |
Industry News
Newsprint Prices Continue to Fallnew
Editor & Publisher |
07-09-2007 1:01 pm |
Industry News
Report: Dailies Losing the Most Ad Dollars to the Internetnew
Editor & Publisher |
07-09-2007 1:00 pm |
Industry News
Video is the Next Big Thing for Classifiedsnew
Media Life Magazine |
07-09-2007 11:20 am |
Industry News
Independent Weekly Editor Steps Downnew
Richard Hart resigned last week, the News & Observer reports. The editor of the 50,000-circulation Durham, North Carolina, weekly tells the N&O that he chose to resign. "It's a tough job, and I was ready to move on," he says. "I'm very proud of the work of the staff and the awards the paper received during my time there."
The News & Observer |
07-05-2007 11:44 am |
Industry News
SF Weekly Moves to Dismiss SFBG Lawsuitnew
Writing for the defendant newspaper and its parent company, Village Voice Media, Will Harper reports that the Weekly said it sold ads below cost for "pro-competitive" reasons like generating new sales and "increas(ing) the customer base in a severely depressed market." VVM's motion, which was filed last week in response to the Bay Guardian's Oct. 2004 lawsuit, also asserted that the newspaper chain never engaged in a conspiracy to put its Bay Area competitor out of business. And in a unique counter-argument, the Weekly claimed that by filing suit, the Bay Guardian is trying to force it to reduce editorial expenses in order to adhere to a business model that relies heavily on freelancers and unpaid interns, instead of full-time reporters. THE BAY GUARDIAN'S REPORT: Judge advises attorneys to prepare for October trial even as summary-judgment motion is filed.
SF Weekly |
07-05-2007 11:31 am |
Industry News
Eugene Weekly Holds Jingle Contest
The alt-weekly put out a call for local musicians to create 30-second jingles, and plenty responded. There are now 26 jingles in the running for the possibility of being featured in local radio ads for the Weekly. Readers are currently listening to and voting on the best jingles online, and the winner of the reader's poll will also receive a $500 prize. "We will probably cut the [radio] spot with an all-star band in different genres," says Bill Shreve, the Weekly's director of Marketing and Advertising. He adds: "We've gotten a pretty good buzz off this thing."
AAN News |
07-03-2007 3:08 pm |
Industry News
'Newspaper' vs. 'Content' Biz is a 'False Dichotomy,' Consultant Saysnew
"The biggest problem I have with the framing is that it's a supply-side question, which means there's hardly a wrong answer to it," says newspaper consultant Terry Garrett. The alt-weekly veteran discussed "Making Decisions in a Complex and Changing Media Market" at this year's AAN convention, and has begun a series of blog posts on the state of the alt-weekly industry as he sees it. "The implication in the subtle difference between the two choices is that you may be spending too much time on non-core business function and too little on your newspapers," he says. "The two ways to prove that is to ask demand-side questions first and to accurately measure your performance in operations against the best success standards." He lays out four key "demand-side" questions for newspapers:
- What information do consumers want?
- What does that information accomplish for them?
- How do they get it?
- Are their preferences for what they want and how they get it changing, and if so in what ways?
Don't Panic Blog |
07-03-2007 9:34 am |
Industry News
More Reaction to The Nation's Piece on LA Weeklynew
Fishbowl LA says that Jon Wiener's piece on LA Weekly and Village Voice Media is, among other things, a "cry from an old media guy in a new media world." Regarding Wiener's criticism of the paper's slight reporting on the May Day fiasco in MacArthur Park, which was his evidence of the paper's "big editorial shift to the right," Fishbowl LA points him to the internet, where the Weekly published nearly 4,000 words on the subject on top of the "330-word piece" Wiener cited. Longtime film reviewer (and current OC Weekly staffer) Luke Y. Thompson also tells Fishbowl that "the film reviews haven't been assigned out of Denver for as long as I've been a part of it," as former OC Weekly editor Will Swaim had told Wiener. Meanwhile, New Times Broward-Palm Beach columnist Bob Norman, in a letter to Romenesko, says the story "is exactly the kind of thing Village Voice Media is moving the alt-weekly world away from -- presumptuous ideological essays with much teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing but very little actual reporting or common sense."
Fishbowl LA |
07-02-2007 1:42 pm |
Industry News
FOIA Audit Finds Systematic Failures, Massive Delays, and No Penaltiesnew
The oldest Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests still pending in the federal government were first filed two decades ago, according to the Knight Open Government Survey (pdf file) released today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The Department of State reported ten pending requests older than 15 years; other agencies with the oldest requests include the Air Force and two components
of the Justice Department, the Criminal Division and the FBI. The survey also found that ten agencies have misrepresented their FOIA backlogs to Congress. One example: the Justice Department's Office of Information
and Privacy -- which is leading the opposition to FOIA reform legislation -- told Congress that its oldest request was from 2003, when unresolved requests actually date back to 2001.
National Security Archive Press Release (PDF file) |
07-02-2007 10:43 am |
Industry News
Search Engine Optimization Can Also Be Used to Sabotage Websitesnew
Forbes |
07-02-2007 1:06 pm |
Industry News
SF Weekly: The Nation 'Call[s] Bullshit on Itself'new
Matt Smith writes that this week's issue of The Nation, which features Jon Wiener's lament about changes that have taken place at LA Weekly since the paper changed hands in 2006, "reads as if were (sic) a schizophrenic-produced theme issue on your host, Village Voice Media." According to Smith, the July 16 issue of the weekly magazine juxtaposes Wiener's criticisms of the "staff cuts, heavy workload and misdirected investigative talent" at VVM with "another 3,000-word-plus story whose central thrust is based largely around Village Voice Media original reporting." In the latter, Liza Featherstone uses documents revealed in April by SF Weekly as a basis for her reporting on labor boss Andy Stern.
SF Weekly |
06-29-2007 8:48 am |
Industry News
Constable Dogged by Dallas Observer Resignsnew
After a judge agreed that his case could move forward, Dallas County Constable Mike Dupree resigned yesterday during a court hearing on a petition seeking to remove him from office, the Observer reports. The suit came on the heels of reports of Dupree's misconduct -- including sexual harassment of subordinates -- that were first revealed in the alt-weekly. In a separate Dupree-related matter, the police officer accepted a plea from the Texas attorney general's office charging him with misdemeanor abuse of power.
Dallas Observer |
06-29-2007 8:26 am |
Industry News
Is it 'The End of an Era' at LA Weekly and OC Weekly?new
That's what Jon Wiener argues in the Nation. Wiener claims the papers' new owners at Village Voice Media no longer cover "the forces trying to make LA a more egalitarian and less polarized city," and he laments what he calls LA Weekly's "editorial shift to the right" and a move towards "hyperlocalism" and "investigative hit pieces that target local bigwigs." UPDATE: On his blog, Matt Welch begs to differ.
The Nation |
06-28-2007 1:56 pm |
Industry News
Seattle Weekly Story Leads to Firing of High School Tennis Coachnew
Earlier this month, Aaron Silverberg, the self-proclaimed "Buddhist tennis coach," was the subject of a Seattle Weekly profile highlighting his flute playing and his reading of sensual poetry to the girls he coached at Ballard High School. Last week, Silverberg was fired, according to the Weekly. He says the school's principal told him that "no matter what, when someone sees something with young girls referring to sex, it puts me in a gray area." For its part, the Weekly wonders why it took them to bring this to the light. "Where was the oversight from Ballard administrators? Why did it take a newspaper story to make them aware of Silverberg's supposed improprieties?"
Seattle Weekly |
06-28-2007 10:59 am |
Industry News
Tags: Management, Seattle Weekly
