AAN News
9/11 Truth Activists Picket L.A. Weekly Officenew
Some adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement hit the streets in front of the paper's Hollywood office on Friday, handing out flyers, waving upside-down American flags and denouncing longtime columnist Marc Cooper. The activists took umbrage with this turn of phrase included in a recent Cooper column on Cynthia McKinney: "She was one of the first high-profile adherents of the official whack-job '9/11 Truth' movement, directly implicating the U.S. government in the staging of the attack on the Twin Towers." The Weekly has a slideshow of the protests.
MarcCooper.com | L.A. Weekly |
01-14-2008 8:33 am |
Industry News
Baltimore City Paper Column Gets the Stage Treatment
In her weekly "Murder Ink" column, Anna Ditkoff factually recounts Baltimore's homicides as they are made public by the police department and gives updates as they go through the legal system. This week, the Single Carrot Theatre compiled all the 2007 columns (282 murders) and did a straight reading of all of them, in order to give a comprehensive view of Baltimore's murder rate. City Paper managing editor Erin Sullivan tells AAN News that the reading was nearly three hours long, there were so many murders to cover.
AAN News |
01-11-2008 2:49 pm |
Industry News
Metro Times Joins Suit for Disclosure of Voter Informationnew
The ACLU of Michigan filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit today on behalf of Metro Times, three political parties, and a political consulting firm, to overturn a law that enables only the Democratic and Republican parties to obtain lists of people who will vote on Tuesday's presidential primary, the Detroit Free Press reports. The law, passed last August, doesn't require voters to register by party, so the ACLU is arguing that the party in which residents will cast votes is valuable to political parties, candidates, journalists and citizen groups.
The Detroit Free Press |
01-11-2008 2:20 pm |
Legal News
Weekly Dig Publisher Takes Over as Editornew
While he has been the de facto editor since the fall, Jeff Lawrence says in a letter to readers that he's now officially editor. "Once again, we need to reinvent and recast our editorial voice, from the ground up," he says. In other Dig news, Laura Dargus has been named the paper's new managing editor after being the interim managing editor for a few months. Lastly, Cara Bayles will begin her tenure as news and features editor in a few weeks.
Boston's Weekly Dig |
01-11-2008 11:33 am |
Industry News
L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke Nominated for ICG Publicists Press Awardnew
Variety |
01-11-2008 1:07 pm |
Honors & Achievements
Creative Loafing Editor Carlton Hargro to be Honored by Urban Leaguenew
The Charlotte Observer |
01-11-2008 11:40 am |
Honors & Achievements
Web Publishing Conference Early Registration Deadline Approaching
The early deadline is this Friday, Jan. 11; registration rates will increase by $50 the following day. The conference is slated for Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, and will feature programming on topics ranging from online metrics to social networking. In addition, two separate open discussions, one for editors and the other for web-tech personnel, will be added to the program next week after AAN conducts a survey of registrants to determine when to schedule them. You can register online by clicking here.
AAN |
01-10-2008 12:45 pm |
Association News
Michael Musto Joins the Blogosphere

The Village Voice columnist, called "one of the wittiest stylists in the English language" by UPI, launched "La Daily Musto" yesterday. The blog is designed to compliment his weekly "La Dolce Musto" column. Musto tells New York magazine that he'll write one post a day. "I'm really nervous about finding things to write about," he says.
(FULL STORY)
The Village Voice Press Release | New York |
01-10-2008 8:53 am |
Press Releases
Federal Judge Dismisses Arkansas Times Lawsuit on Executionsnew
The First Amendment provides no guarantee that witnesses should be able to see every step of an execution in Arkansas, a federal judge ruled as she dismissed a lawsuit by the Arkansas Times and local chapters of the ACLU and the Society for Professional Journalists, the AP reports. The suit sought to allow journalists to witness the prisoner as (s)he is led to the execution chamber, strapped down, and inserted with IVs. In her ruling, the judge wrote that executions have "moved from the public square to inside prison walls," an area where the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled reporters have no special right to access. "Even if constitutionally we don't have a right to be there at every step of that process, public accountability demands that we should be," Times editor Max Brantley says, adding that he and the other parties would confer with lawyers before deciding whether to appeal the ruling.
The Associated Press |
01-09-2008 9:18 am |
Legal News
Nat Hentoff Celebrates 50 Years at the Village Voice

"Hentoff began writing a regular media and civil rights column for the Voice on January 8, 1958, and is still going strong," according to a press release. To celebrate, the paper is running two special features on the columnist. In the first, Allen Barra remembers when, in the midst of "a typical internecine squabble" in the late '80s, he took a cheap shot at Hentoff via a letter to the editor. Hentoff's response was to give Barra a Pee Wee Russell album with a note saying: "Listen to this. It might clear your head out." Barra writes: "Instead of jumping into the argument with pettiness and personal acrimony, he sought to create a dialogue with reason, tolerance, and jazz. What can you do with a guy like that?" In a companion feature, the Voice is running nearly 6,000 words of "Nat Hentoff's Greatest Hits," excerpts from half a century of columns.
(FULL STORY)
The Village Voice Press Release |
01-09-2008 8:43 am |
Press Releases
Writer's 2004 Piece in NOW Leads to Federal Chargesnew
In "How I Could Have Voted Three Times," James Di Fiore claimed that no fixed address or ID card was required to vote in Canada -- and he went to three polling places on election day to prove it. However, he never explicitly stated that he cast ballots in all three locations. After more than a year had passed, Di Fiore wrote a letter to the Toronto Star admitting that he "voted -- three times." That caught the eye of election officials, and nine months later Di Fiore was charged under the Canada Elections Act. When the trial began in December, Di Fiore told the National Post he was disappointed that NOW was not supporting him. But senior news editor Ellie Kirzner said Di Fiore was to blame. "We felt our story was completely discredited, he had lied to our readers about staying within the bounds of not tampering with the election," she said. "Painful as it was for us, we realized we could not defend the story." Di Fiore's trial resumes in February. He faces a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and up to three months in prison.
The National Post |
01-08-2008 8:38 am |
Industry News
Seattle Weekly's 'Dategirl' Columnist Set to Release Booknew
"During my seven-plus-year tenure as a sex and love advice columnist, I've either experienced firsthand or read about dates so heinous, it's truly a wonder my vagina didn't seal itself shut," Judy McGuire writes in an excerpt of her new book, How Not to Date. The book, which collects many of the aforementioned "henious" dates, will be released Jan. 10 by Sasquatch Books.
Seattle Weekly |
01-07-2008 11:22 am |
Industry News
New Year, New Look for Magazinesnew
Mediaweek |
01-07-2008 9:59 am |
Industry News
Sale of Style Weekly Explored
As we noted yesterday, Landmark Communications, which owns both Style Weekly and Port Folio Weekly, has hired investment bankers to explore the possibility of selling the company's holdings, which include more than 100 publications and other properties, including The Weather Channel. "Although I was disappointed to hear the Battens were exploring a sale, our readers will continue to get the best of in-depth, local reporting on news, arts and culture," Style editor Jason Roop says in a press release. Publisher Lori Collier Waran concurs, noting that readers, advertisers and other business partners can expect business as usual. "We just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and we're still going strong."
(FULL STORY)
Style Weekly Press Release |
01-04-2008 11:33 am |
Press Releases
Departing New Times Columnist Talks About the Nightlife Beatnew

"Marya Summers is tired of hanging out in nightclubs, so she's quitting her job," South Florida Media Jobs reports. The New Times Broward-Palm Beach nightlife columnist is leaving to pursue an MFA in creative nonfiction. In this Q&A, she dispenses the notion that writing about nightlife is easy. "Most people are self-deceiving when it comes to who they are, so my column comes as a slap in the face," she says. "I've lost friends." Asked to give advice to the intrepid columnist who might want to replace her, Summers gets right to the point: "An expense account for a nightlife columnist is just incentive to drive drunk. Negotiate more pay instead of reimbursed expenses."
South Florida Media Jobs |
01-04-2008 9:01 am |
Industry News