AAN News
Louis Black Reminisces About 25 Years at the Austin Chroniclenew
The first issue was a "disaster," says the Chronicle's co-founder, "a calamity so legendary that, for much of a decade, copies of it were not allowed in the office." The cover featured Shock Treatment, a movie destined never to open, and it was completely purple as the result of a miscommunication with the printer. The present-day Chronicle is "a paper as honest as we can get it," Black says. "We don't just create this paper, we're fans. We can't wait to see what's going to be in the next issue and the next and the next." In addition to Black's column in the Sept. 8 issue, the Chronicle posted a 25th anniversary photo album online.
Austin Chronicle |
09-07-2006 8:16 am |
Industry News
Austin Chronicle Editors Pick Three Milestones From First 25 Yearsnew
News 8 Austin |
09-07-2006 8:04 am |
Industry News
Louis Black: AltWeekly Awards Honor Papers Most Like Glossy Mags
In the last issue of his alt-weekly's 25th year, Louis Black offers up "Ten Ways of Looking at an Austin Chronicle," one of which is as a "non-award-winning weekly." Black says that the Austin Chronicle staff usually doesn't have time to submit entries in the AltWeekly Awards, and even when they do, they "rarely win." (The Chronicle has won a total of five awards, including a 2006 first-place award for Drugs Reporting.) "I argue that this is because the awards have evolved to the point where they honor the weeklies that are the most like the glossy magazines, with very long, in-depth stories beating out most of the others," Black writes. "More often than not, many papers engage in the type of 'gotcha! journalism' in which a City Council member is exposed to be self-serving, using public money to enrich him or herself, and/or to be found with an underage boy or girl or animal of any age."
08-31-2006 12:15 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Austin Chronicle, Louis Black
Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Gives Austin Chronicle Press Attention
Carole Keeton Strayhorn, an independent candidate for Texas governor, held a press conference July 27 to announce that she was dropping her effort to have her name listed as "Carole Keeton 'Grandma' Strayhorn" on the November ballot. During the conference, Strayhorn illustrated her grandmotherliness by holding up the July 28 issue of the Austin Chronicle, the cover of which features Strayhorn holding her grandchildren on her lap. The Associated Press photo of Strayhorn and the Chronicle ran in national newspapers (like the Washington Post, here).
07-31-2006 7:53 am |
Industry News
Tags: Editorial, Austin Chronicle
Austin Chronicle Participates in Class-Action Suit Against AT&Tnew
AP via Fort Worth Star-Telegram |
05-19-2006 12:20 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Austin Chronicle, Louis Black
'I'm Not as Big of an (Expletive) as I Used to Be,' Says Louis Blacknew
The co-founder and editor of the Austin Chronicle is a self-loathing, temperamental, explosive jerk. And that's just what his friends say about him. Despite his foibles, however, everyone seems to agree that this amazingly passionate man (pictured), co-founder of the SXSW music, film and interactive festivals, deserves a lot of credit for Austin's cultural prominence. "Without Black, a music fanatic and film savant, the self-proclaimed 'Live Music Capital of the World' would lack much of its cultural stock," writes Chris Garcia in the Austin American-Statesman. "I look back and think that in some ways I am the luckiest person I know," says Black. "I do what I love. I do it every day."
Austin American-Statesman (reg. req.) |
03-13-2006 3:35 pm |
Industry News
Circulation Software Makes Life Easier at Alt-Weeklies
A recent survey of AAN papers revealed that the applications alt-weeklies are using to track circulation are as diverse as the newspapers themselves. A few papers rely on their in-house wiz for a custom-made program, but for the rest of the industry, a commercial package is the only sophisticated option. Alt-weekly circulation insiders describe their woes, successes, and dreams of better uses for the numbers.
(FULL STORY)
Isaiah Thompson |
03-06-2006 10:53 am |
Association News
Austin Chronicle Editor Produces Documentarynew
Greg Mitchell's Thursday column on EditorandPublisher.com describes Louis Black's role in financing and producing Be Here to Love Me, a new documentary about the late singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Black was personally acquainted with Van Zandt, and describes him as "usually pretty fucked up but very friendly." The Chronicle also printed a cover story about the film; Black says that "if the staff felt it was a conflict of interest, believe me, I would have heard about it." Be Here to Love Me has been well-reviewed for its warts-and-all portrayal of Van Zandt. Black is now working on a book about the films of Jonathan Demme.
Editor & Publisher |
12-23-2005 9:42 am |
Industry News
Chronicle Gift Guide Recommends AAN's AltWeekly Contest Book
This year the Austin Chronicle gift guide features an item close to our hearts: Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005. Reviewer Nora Ankrum writes, "This is the gift for the writer or journalist on your shopping list, to be kept on the reference shelf next to the OED and the Chicago Manual and the most recent Best American Magazine Writing, but you won't find it at a bookstore, so order it online, soon." And no, the Austin Chronicle does not have a winning entry included in the book, although it has received AltWeekly Award recognition in earlier years.
12-16-2005 9:33 am |
Industry News
Utne Awards Acknowledge Altsnew
Utne magazine has announced the nominees for its 2004 Independent Press Awards, and Association of Alternative Newsweeklies member papers dominate the "Local/Regional Coverage" category. Austin Chronicle, Chicago Reader, The Stranger, The Texas Observer and Westword all received nominations, as did Los Angeles CityBeat, an upstart alt-weekly that's only been publishing for 16 months. Nominees were chosen from among 2,000 alternative media sources. According to the Utne Web site, selection depended partly upon which publications were "most apt to go missing from the Utne library."
Utne |
10-27-2004 5:06 pm |
Industry News
Daniel Hardick, L.D., Searches for Purpose and Meaningnew
Is there really a personals manager at Austin Chronicle
named Daniel Hardick, or is it just a clever nom de plume? Well, we met him at an AAN convention, so we know he exists. But we must
confess that until now we were unaware of his "hardscrabble
beginnings" and "humbling plummet."
AAN.org Staff Directory |
09-28-2001 9:12 am |
Industry News
Tales of Joy and Terror: 20 Years at the Austin Chroniclenew
"If the vote was 5 to 1 against Nick, the discussion would pause for a respectful second and then proceed as though no vote was taken until we all came around to Nick's point of view or reached a new compromise." That's how decisions were made in the early days of the Austin Chronicle, according to Editor Louis Black, who says Founder and Publisher Nick Barbaro was almost always right, and more importantly, "had a vision of how this paper should relate to the community and how a business should conduct itself." Twenty years later things still "happen when they happen, get done when they get done, and every Thursday morning" newcomers are "both pleased and astonished to find the piles of issues stacked in the hallway."
Austin Chronicle |
09-10-2001 1:26 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Austin Chronicle
