AAN News
Anthrax Prankster Who Hit News & Review in '07 Seems to be Backnew
Marc Keyser is a familiar name to the staff of the Sacramento News & Review. Keyser, who is suspected of mailing out 120 hoax anthrax letters nationwide last week, first sent a hoax anthrax package to the N&R in January 2007. He was questioned and warned by FBI agents, but not arrested, after he mailed a cylinder marked "anthrax" to the alt-weekly because he wanted publicity for a novel he had written.
The Sacramento Bee via the Seattle Times |
11-03-2008 9:19 am |
Industry News
Correction: Another AAN Member Was Honored at California Press Awards
AAN News has been informed that we missed the fact that the Santa Barbara Independent won several California Newspaper Publishers Association awards when we reported on the awards last week. Indy publisher Randy Campbell notes that the press association for some reason omitted the "Santa Barbara" from the paper's name and simply called it The Independent. The alt-weekly won five awards this year, including first-place finishes in Feature Photo and Investigative/Enterprise
Reporting.
AAN News |
11-03-2008 8:06 am |
Honors & Achievements
Ex-Village Voice Publisher Rallies the Troops for McCainnew
Former Voice publisher and RFK aide Bartle Bull "embraced Republican John McCain for president, hurled Barack Obama under the bus, and then backed it slowly over the Democratic nominee" at a Saturday rally in Manhattan, the National Review reports. Bull, who proved to be a controversial figure at the 1970s-era Voice, used his Democratic cred to attack Obama.
"I had the privilege of serving as Robert F. Kennedy's New York campaign manager when he ran for president in 1968," Bull said. "But in honest conscience, I cannot support the Democratic ticket in this campaign." MORE: The Huffington Post has Voice co-founder Ed Fancher's take on the election and Obama: "A black president would be a wonderful thing for racial healing," he says, "but not at the cost of putting someone who may not be qualified in [the White House]."
The National Review |
11-03-2008 7:46 am |
Industry News
Tags: Management, The Village Voice
J.P. Morgan Reduces Online Ad Forecast for 2nd Time in Two Monthsnew
Online Media Daily |
11-03-2008 8:58 am |
Industry News
Will Swaim Named Publisher of LA CityBeat
Will Swaim has been named publisher of LA CityBeat and New Angeles Magazine, effective Nov. 10. Swaim was most recently the founding editor and publisher of The District Weekly, a non-AAN weekly in Long Beach. Prior to that, he was OC Weekly's founding editor in 1995, and went on to become publisher of that paper as well, before stepping down in January 2007. At CityBeat, he'll be reunited with former Weekly colleague Rebecca Schoenkopf, who is now CityBeat's editor. "LA CityBeat and New Angeles are terrific publications," Swaim says in a release. "I'm thrilled to have this chance to use what I've learned in Orange County and Long Beach to help them reach their enormous potential."
(FULL STORY)
Southland Publishing Press Release |
10-31-2008 3:16 pm |
Press Releases
Boston's Weekly Dig Prints Two Mock Covers for 2012 Election
You read that right -- 2012. The Dig published two covers this week imitating the look and feel of Boston's two dailies, the Globe and the Herald, which predict the headlines four years into prospective McCain and Obama administrations. Managing editor Laura Dargus says the idea was to provide a little humor to the overwrought election. "I'm so sick of this already, so it seemed natural to just move beyond 2008 and have fun with 2012 before it, too, becomes overdone," Dargus says in a release.
(FULL STORY)
Boston's Weekly Dig Press Release |
10-31-2008 2:52 pm |
Press Releases
L.A. Weekly Lays Off A Handful of Staffersnew
LA Observed is reporting that the Weekly has laid off longtime editor and columnist Marc Cooper, managing editor Sharan Street, copy chief David Caplan, staff writer Matthew Fleischer, senior designer Laura Steele and assistant to the editor Pandora Young.
LA Observed |
10-31-2008 2:39 pm |
Industry News
Alt-Weeklies Resoundingly Say: Vote Obama
An informal email survey and website scan of AAN's 123 American papers finds that 57 have made presidential endorsements this year, and all of them are endorsing Barack Obama. It marks quite a difference from 2000, when a similar survey found alt-weeklies' endorsements evenly split between Al Gore and Ralph Nader. Many papers choose not to endorse, for a variety of reasons, but some of those papers jumped into the fray for the first time this year.
(FULL STORY)
AAN News |
10-31-2008 10:21 am |
Industry News
Tags: Editorial, Management
Last Year's Arrest of VVM Execs Becomes Campaign Issuenew
Tim Nelson, the Democrat challenging Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, is running a radio ad accusing Thomas of ordering the October 2007 arrests of Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey because they reported in Phoenix New Times that they had been served a sweeping subpoena from a special prosecutor demanding information about the paper's online readers, Editor & Publisher reports. The ad says Thomas is responsible for "arresting journalists in the dark of night in front of their families because of what they published," and accuses Thomas of using KGB tactics. (New Times reports that Thomas tried to get the commercial pulled from local airwaves.) "Make no mistake about it: the New Times subpoenas and arrests were a massive abuse of power and the public trust," Nelson said at a press conference yesterday. "They have brought ridicule to our county and its justice system."
Editor & Publisher | Phoenix New Times |
10-31-2008 9:34 am |
Industry News
J-School Grads Still Want to Break into Alt-Weekly Worldnew
Reacting to former Chicago Reader staffer Edward McClelland's piece in Columbia Journalism Review arguing that alt-weeklies were no longer hip, Washington City Paper assistant managing editor Jule Banville shares an anectdote from a J-school job fair last year. "The kids lined up to talk to me. A staff writer from the Philadelphia City Paper also had trouble coming up for air," she says. "For these grads -- still -- alt-weeklies were where it was at ... they didn't want to have to slug it out at a podunk daily churning out cop briefs and obits. Yet, they were beaten down enough to know they're nowhere near ready for a magazine job."
Washington City Paper |
10-31-2008 9:24 am |
Industry News
Metro Pulse Named in $20 Million Libel and Slander Lawsuitnew
This summer, a Knoxville homeowners association published a newsletter raising concerns about a local pain clinic. The story, which Metro Pulse later reported on, quoted police sources who claimed that several armed robberies and drug deals took place in the local grocery store parking lot when patients went there to refill their pain meds, which had been prescribed by the clinic, Bearden Healthcare Associates. On Wednesday, the clinic's doctors filed a $20 million lawsuit against the homeowners association, Metro Pulse and the alt-weekly's parent company, claiming libel, slander, and interference with business practices. "We intend to vigorously defend our position in the case, and we are confident that we will prevail when the facts are established," says a statement released by Metro Pulse.
WBIR-TV |
10-31-2008 9:08 am |
Legal News
News & Review Papers Fare Well in California Press Awards
Sacramento News & Review Press Release |
10-31-2008 2:33 pm |
Press Releases
IAB Aims To Streamline Online Media Buying, Ad Servingnew
Online Media Daily |
10-31-2008 9:08 am |
Industry News
How I Got That Story: Jeffrey Anderson
In the twelfth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Jeffrey Anderson talks about his multi-part investigative series "The Town the Law Forgot," which uncovered shocking abuses of power by government officials in Los Angeles County. He tells Sam Stoker how he started on this thread, and how he kept at it until it all started to unravel for him. Anderson, who wrote the series for L.A. Weekly but has since changed coast and is a staffer at Baltimore City Paper, also gives some advice to anyone undertaking an investigation. "The main thing is you just can't plan things out in advance," he says. "Things don't occur logically sometimes. You just need to be ready to revive things you have let go of. You just can't plan it."
(FULL STORY)
AAN News |
10-30-2008 3:54 pm |
Association News
L.A. Weekly Theater Critic's Play Hits Off-Broadwaynew
"There's much to admire in the first act of Steven Leigh Morris's intelligent but uneven new play," says New York Times theater critic Rachel Saltz. "Beachwood Drive," written by Morris and based on a true story, has at its center a Ukrainian prostitute enslaved by the Russian mob and then caught by the police in a sting. Though Saltz praises the first act, she says that Morris "gets tripped up in the second act ... hitting his themes too hard and making his play seem more literary contrivance than living, breathing drama." The play is at New York's Abingdon Theater through Nov. 16.
The New York Times |
10-30-2008 11:52 am |
Industry News
