AAN News
Pro-Voting Public Service Ads Available for AAN Members
Portland-based ad agency Borders Perrin Norrander has created a campaign urging people to vote this fall and is offering the ads for AAN members to run between now and election day. Much like the presidential campaign, the ad campaign's theme is change, with the tag line "Don't Vote. Things Are Just Fine the Way They Are," paired with striking visual representations of some of the country's most pressing problems. Willamette Week publisher Richard Meeker says the agency is OK with AAN members turning to other advertisers to help sponsor the advertisements and perhaps get them more prominently placed within the paper. Meeker adds that WW is trying to secure ad dollars from MoveOn.org so they can run the Borders ads on full pages, rather than on a space-available basis. To view the ads, visit ThingsAreFine.org.
AAN News |
09-30-2008 9:51 am |
Industry News
Alt-Weekly Cartoonist Derf Releases New Book
Derf, whose comic "The City" has appeared in various alt-weeklies since 1990, has just released his latest book, Punk Rock & Trailer Parks. The graphic novel "takes place in recession-ravaged Akron, Ohio, in 1980, at the peak of the Rubber City's unlikely and lively punk rock scene." It's Derf's longest book yet, and his first work of fiction (check out a preview here). In an interview with Comicon.com's The Pulse, Derf says for his next project he is re-working his first book, My Friend Dahmer, the true story of his teenage friendship with the future serial killer, as a "full-blown graphic novel."
(FULL STORY)
SLG Publishing Press Release |
09-30-2008 8:44 am |
Press Releases
Study: Number of Americans Watching Online Video Rises Sharplynew
Media Daily News |
09-30-2008 8:47 am |
Industry News
Creative Loafing Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protectionnew
The company, which owns Creative Loafing papers in Atlanta, Charlotte, Sarasota and Tampa, as well as the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning, the St. Petersburg Times reports. City Paper editor Erik Wemple reports that CEO Ben Eason discussed the filing with top company officials in a conference call this morning, and said that the bankruptcy filing would allow CL's six papers to establish a greater online presence while the company reorganizes its operations. A corporate memo on the filing says it "has little to do with the acquisition" of the Reader and City Paper last year. Eason also said that the move entails no liquidation or layoffs. In fact, the Chapter 11 filing will roll back editorial staff cuts at the papers, Wemple writes. MORE: Read more about the move from Creative Loafing (Tampa), the Reader, Crain's and Bloomberg News.
The St. Petersburg Times | Washington City Paper |
09-29-2008 12:15 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Circulation, Classified Advertising, Design & Production, Editorial, Electronic Publishing, Financial, Management, Marketing, Retail Advertising, CL, Inc., Washington City Paper, Chicago Reader, Creative Loafing (Atlanta), Creative Loafing (Charlotte), Creative Loafing (Tampa), Creative Loafing (Sarasota), Ben Eason, Erik Wemple
Nevada Alt-Weeklies Win Big at State Press Awardsnew
The Nevada Press Association announced the winners of its 2008 "Better Newspaper Contest" Saturday night, and two AAN members fared quite well. The Reno News & Review won a total of 44 awards, including 18 first-place finishes; and Las Vegas CityLife won a total of 32 awards, with 12 of those being first-place wins.
The Reno Gazette-Journal |
09-29-2008 8:37 am |
Honors & Achievements
| Comments (2)
Fast Forward Weekly Story Provokes Response from Prime Minister
Fast Forward Weekly, the alt-weekly in Calgary, Canada, published a story Sept. 25 that quoted a Calgary Member of Parliament making comments linking immigrants to crime in the middle of an election campaign. Lee Richardson made the comments in a telephone interview with the paper, and as soon as the story was published, it was picked up in the local and national media. The following day, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper dismissed the story as a ridiculous example of "gotcha journalism" -- even though the paper had phoned Richardson after the initial interview to ask him to clarify his remarks. (Richardson's retraction was included in the Fast Forward story.) The story even warrented a mention on Comedy Central's election blog.
AAN News |
09-26-2008 5:28 pm |
Industry News
Washington City Paper Shifting to More Web-Centric Approachnew
The Georgetown Voice's nearly 3,000-word story on the alt-weekly looks at how it is evolving under the ownership of Creative Loafing, and how the paper is fighting to maintain its identity -- and market share -- despite having fewer resources. "You want to create a rich environment and then bring it down into the print," says CL CEO Ben Eason, who is currently focused on uniting the company's six papers as a national web presence. "Without a doubt, the web is a far richer environment than print." Editor Erik Wemple says he sees the paper a year from now as being "very, very, very much a web machine." But publisher Amy Austin adds that, while online advertising revenue is quickly growing for City Paper, it still only makes up approximately 5 percent of the paper's total revenue, which has been in decline. By 2006, the paper's net revenue -- traditionally around 15 percent -- had fallen to 4.7 percent.
The Georgetown Voice |
09-26-2008 4:27 pm |
Industry News
East Bay Express Publisher Talks Distribution Strategy
Jody Colley left her position as advertising director at the San Francisco Bay Guardian to become publisher of the East Bay Express when the paper was sold by Village Voice Media to local investors in May 2007. Since then, the Express has been working on a variety of distribution-related changes: Introducing graffiti-painted art racks, fighting newspaper theft by hiring a private eye, and trying to distribute a higher percentage of papers indoors. Express president Hal Brody has even patented a system that prevents people from taking more than a few papers out of a news box at a time. Colley recently talked to AAN News about these and other developments. For more from Jody Colley, check out her Q&A with newspaper consultant Terry Garrett on his blog.
(FULL STORY)
AAN News |
09-26-2008 4:20 pm |
Industry News
The Texas Observer Names New Editor
The Observer today announced that Bob Moser is the publication's new editor. He replaces Jake Bernstein, who left to become a reporter for ProPublica in June. Moser, who got his start as editor of North Carolina's Independent Weekly, has recently been writing and editing for The Nation, and is the author of the new book Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority. "There is no place in the country evolving more rapidly, or changing more fundamentally, than Texas," Moser says in a release. "The Observer will aim to deploy our tough, thorough, hard-nosed reporting to nudge the state in a progressive direction."
(FULL STORY)
The Texas Observer Press Release |
09-26-2008 9:36 am |
Press Releases
Fast Forward Weekly Story Wins Provincial Newspaper Awardnew
Fast Forward Weekly's Drew Anderson earned a first-place award in the best feature story by a local writer category at the Alberta Weekly Newspaper Association's Awards of Excellence 2008. The story examined the practice of clearcut logging in Alberta and the controversy caused by logging in the Bragg Creek area of Kananaskis Country. "I was surprised by how complex the arguments for and against clear-cutting actually are," says Anderson. "The debate has become so politicized and so emotional, that the science is often excluded in popular discussions."
Fast Forward Weekly |
09-26-2008 8:25 am |
Honors & Achievements
Boise Weekly Eliminates Ad Director Position
Longtime ad director Nancy E. Spittle is leaving the Weekly after seven years "to pursue new professional adventures," according to a press release. Her position will not be filled -- instead, the Weekly has hired two additional account executives. "Even though Boise Weekly still has positive revenue growth over last year, the economy requires all companies to tighten ship and work hard to increase revenue and improve performance in sales," the press release notes.
(FULL STORY)
Boise Weekly Press Release |
09-26-2008 8:00 am |
Press Releases
How I Got That Story: Malcolm Gay
In the third installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Malcolm Gay, a regular freelancer for Riverfront Times, talks to Corina Knoll about his feature profile of author Qiu Xiaolong. Gay, who was formerly a Village Voice Media fellow at the East Bay Express and staff writer at the RFT, says he learned how challenging it is to write about a writer. "What they do physically and in terms of their day-to-day existence is very uneventful. So it's hard to bring drama and animation to those scenes," he says. "That's the challenge: to access that inner world and make it evident in the story."
(FULL STORY)
AAN News |
09-25-2008 1:05 pm |
Association News
Former City Pages Editor Looks Back at 1980s Alt-Weekly Scenenew
In a piece for Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, Craig Cox weaves a review of David Carr's The Night of the Gun with personal anecdotes about Carr (a former editor for the now-defunct Twin Cities Reader, City Pages' crosstown rival) and the Twin Cities alt-weekly scene of the 1980s. "Once you were accepted into the club as a freelancer or -- dream of dreams -- a staffer at one of the two local alternative weeklies, you were plugged into the local pop culture scene in a way no one else was," Cox writes. "You didn't have to be high or narcissistic back then to feel good about working six days a week, every week (as we did at City Pages) for three or four hundred bucks. It was kind of an exclusive fraternity."
Minneapolis Observer Quarterly |
09-25-2008 11:25 am |
Industry News
LA CityBeat Launches New Format with Fifth Annual Real Best LA Issue
LA CityBeat Press Release |
09-25-2008 10:39 am |
Press Releases
Yahoo Overhauls System for Selling Display Adsnew
The New York Times |
09-25-2008 9:14 am |
Industry News
