AAN News
Police Department 'Reviewing' Phoenix New Times Photosnew
Local law enforcement authorities want to determine whether to open an child pornography investigation as a result of photos published in the paper's current issue and on its website, according to the East Valley Tribune. The nude photos of artist Betsy Schneider's children accompany a story about her art, which is featured in a photography show that opened last week in downtown Phoenix. A spokesman in the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and an assistant city attorney in Phoenix's civil division confirm that the police have referred the case. The city attorney says the photos are unlikely to be found illegal, but adds that if they are, "Everybody who picked up one those issues (of the New Times) could be prosecuted for possessing child pornography."
East Valley Tribune |
08-19-2008 12:16 pm |
Industry News
Palo Alto Weekly to Combine Print Editions, Launch 'E-Daily'new
Late next month the Weekly will begin publishing a single weekly print edition every Friday and a new electronic edition, "Express," Monday through Friday, publisher Bill Johnson announced last week. (The Weekly is unique among AAN members in that it currently produces two print products each week, one on Wednesday and one on Friday.) "Our vision is to increasingly rely on our website and our daily electronic edition to provide local news and sports coverage, and to use our newspaper to present in-depth and feature coverage, plus summaries of the week's news," he says. The move reflects changing reading preferences and the increased prominence of the internet, while offering the added benefit of reducing the paper's carbon footprint, Johnson says.
Palo Alto Weekly |
08-18-2008 12:20 pm |
Industry News
Robert Newman: Many of The Stranger's Covers are 'Ready for Framing'new
That's the veteran designer's take after browsing the Seattle alt-weekly's online cover archive. "The Stranger covers are like the cool punk version of The New Yorker, with illustrations, photographs and graphic design that are stand-alone visual statements, with lots of attitude and passion," Newman writes on the Society for Publication Design's blog. "Like The New Yorker, The Stranger covers are the visual voice of the publication, a dialogue each week between the paper and its readers."
The Society for Publication Design |
08-18-2008 11:18 am |
Industry News
Santa Barbara Independent Launches Emergency Alert Servicenew
IndyAlert will provide email, text message, and radio announcements (via partner station KCSB-FM) "during emergencies and public safety challenges." The service is free, but users must subscribe. "In the past two years we've been on the literal front lines of many of Santa Barbara's disasters and emergencies, with our website providing timely coverage we couldn't achieve with the weekly newspaper. But we sometimes found the immediacy of our website was inconvenient or unavailable," publisher Randy Campbell says. "By adding text messaging and email alerts, we can use the wide availability of cell phones to keep our subscribers informed. Add radio to the mix and we've got particularly valuable tools for communication during a power outage or on the go."
Santa Barbara Independent |
08-18-2008 8:52 am |
Industry News
Alt-Weekly Reporter Gets $35,000 Grant for Book Projectnew
Peter Byrne is on leave from the North Bay Bohemian to write The Devil's Pitchfork: Multiple Universes, Mutually Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family, a book he tells AAN News is about "quantum mechanics and multiple universes." Byrne recently learned that the project received a $35,000 grant from The Foundational Questions Institute, a group with a mission to "catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology."
The Foundational Questions Institute |
08-18-2008 8:27 am |
Honors & Achievements
Creative Loafing Lays Off Two Staffers and One Freelance Criticnew
CL's Atlanta editor Ken Edelstein reports that he laid off two editorial staffers on Monday: Senior editor Scott Freeman and senior writer David Lee Simmons. In addition, the St. Petersburg Times reports that CL's Tampa paper has let go of Lance Goldenberg, who'd been a freelance film critic for the paper for 19 years. In his statement, Tampa editor David Warner said that the hole in film coverage will be filled with staff writers from CL's newly acquired papers in Chicago and Washington.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) | St. Petersburg Times |
08-15-2008 8:46 am |
Industry News
Westword Cartoonist Unveils '56 Faces of the Democratic Convention'new
For the past 56 weeks, staff cartoonist Kenny Be has studied the 56 delegations headed to Denver for the Democratic National Convention, and shared his research results in a weekly cartoon called "Delegating Denver." With the convention just around the corner (Aug. 25-28), the cartoons are now collected in a single slideshow on Westword's site. Editor Patricia Calhoun says AAN-member papers are free to excerpt parts of the cartoon in print or link to it online, accompanied by their own commentary. In addition, the Sacramento News & Review has made available free of charge to AAN members a piece from Tom Hayden on what to expect from Denver, and the significance of it all for the future of the country. For more details on that piece, which is available today, email Cosmo Garvin at cosmog (at) newsreview.com
Westword |
08-14-2008 8:23 am |
Industry News
'Election Coverage' Listserv Launches
AAN recently created a new listserv for editors to discuss coverage of the 2008 elections. To join listservs for which they are eligible, AAN members need only login to AAN.org and click on the "Listserv Registrations" link in the My AAN section on the right side of the page.
AAN |
08-13-2008 5:34 pm |
Association News
Tags: Editorial
Honolulu Weekly Discontinues Local Pol's Columnnew
New editor Ragnar Carlson tells the Honolulu Advertiser the Weekly will no longer run a column by Hawai'i Democratic Party chairman Brian Schatz.
"It has really nothing to do with the content of Brian's pieces but more to do with our responsibility to report aggressively on local politics," he says. Schatz had written the column since 2007 after he left the state House for an unsuccessful run for Congress.
The Honolulu Advertiser |
08-12-2008 8:13 am |
Industry News
Plagiarizing Texas Paper Folds, Responds to Slate's Jody Rosennew
Houston Press |
08-11-2008 9:07 am |
Industry News
New Editor Named at New Times Broward-Palm Beach
Eric Barton, the managing editor of Village Voice Media's The Pitch in Kansas City, will take over soon as the company's top editorial employee in Fort Lauderdale. According to a VVM press release, Barton "was closely involved in the growth of The Pitch's website" during his tenure in Kansas City, and he helped Pitch.com "double its traffic by adding blogs, video, audio, podcasts and slideshows." Barton takes the reins at New Times Broward-Palm Beach on September 22.
(FULL STORY)
Village Voice Media Press Release |
08-08-2008 12:52 pm |
Press Releases
Non-AAN-Member, Non-Alt-Weekly Busted in Plagiarism Scandalnew
Slate's Jody Rosen yesterday published a lengthy investigation of the Bulletin, demonstrating that the Montgomery County, Texas newspaper that he called "a free alternative weekly" was filled with plagiarized content. (Most of the purloined content Rosen found was lifted from national sources like Slate and Salon, but one of the stolen pieces was originally published in the AAN member Dallas Observer.) Despite that fact that its only local content was comprised of rewritten press releases on issues like "A Weekend With The Kidz: Big Fun For Good Causes In Downtown Conroe," Rosen can be excused for mistaking the corrupt paper for an alt-weekly because it is a free-circulation tabloid that bills itself as the county's "weekly alternative" and, as he noted, "(l)ike many alt weeklies, the paper's bread-and-butter is politics." Rosen also reported that the paper's masthead "reveals that the Bulletin is part of the Alternative Weekly Network." AWN executive director Mark Hanzlik explains here that the Bulletin is not an AWN member, although the network has in the past placed ads with the paper.
Slate |
08-07-2008 8:16 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Editorial
Fairfield County Weekly Parts Ways With Editor
AAN News has learned that Tom Gogola is no longer the editor of the Tribune Company's AAN-member paper in suburban Connecticut. No replacement has been named. Associate editor Nick Keppler has temporarily assumed the editorial reins, according to Josh Mamis, group publisher for the Weekly and the three other New Mass. Media papers.
AAN News |
08-06-2008 1:27 pm |
Industry News
Tom Robotham Out as Editor of Port Folio Weeklynew
"The reasons for my departure are complicated, but at the heart of the matter is a fundamental disagreement with the management of our parent company over editorial philosophy," Robotham wrote in an editor's note last week. "The higher ups here believed that Port Folio under my leadership had become too staunchly liberal." Robotham, who had been at Port Folio for ten years, has been replaced by a co-editing team of former arts editor Leona Baker and contributor Jeff Maisey, according to the Virginian-Pilot. The daily also notes that the aforementioned "higher ups" have penned a response to Robotham to run in this week's paper. "It has to do with a need for significant change," the column by publisher Colleen Nabhan and general manager Edward Power reportedly says. The paper "has experienced a graying of its audience" and must "embrace new audiences in more inventive and effective ways," they argue.
Port Folio Weekly | The Virginian-Pilot |
08-04-2008 9:10 am |
Industry News
Creative Loafing Columnist Releases New Booknew
"Layered in laughable, lopsided, linguistic humor, Hollis Gillespie's Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility is a wonderful land of well-crafted humor within a world of spellbinding wit," writes J. Edward Sumerau in Metro Spirit. The marks the third book for Gillespie, who writes the "Moodswing" column for Creative Loafing. "I never know how to explain my books except to say, 'It's like Shakespeare,' and hope people get the joke," Gillespie tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This book literally covers my dubious efforts at upward mobility, starting with life with my Dad, the drunk trailer salesman, and ending with selling the TV series (which is based on my first two books) in Hollywood." That TV series is back on track after a brief detour due to the writers' strike, Gillespie tells the Journal, with Laura Dern in tow. "[She's] been a champion of the project since the day after my first book was released," Gillespie says.
Metro Spirit | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
08-01-2008 8:26 am |
Industry News
