Five alt-weeklies won a number of awards in the Oregon and Southwest Washington chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists' 2008 Excellence in Journalism Awards. Among non-daily newspapers in Oregon, Willamette Week took home 10 first-place awards, while Eugene Weekly took home one. Among alt-weeklies in the Northwest region, WW won six first-place awards; Seattle Weekly won four; the Missoula Independent won two; and the Pacific Northwest Inlander won one.

Continue ReadingAAN Members Pick Up Dozens of SPJ Awards in Pacific Northwest

WW's new, MIT-grad webmaster Seth Raphael leads a double life as a technologically savvy magician, MagicSeth, who performs "tricks involving telepathic Google searches and psychic digital cameras." It is in that capacity that he's been selected as one of 25 fellows for 2009 TED Global, which will be held this summer in Oxford. Raphael will give a three-minute presentation to the invitation-only crowd, which is slated to include speakers like Naomi Klein and black-hole specialist Andrea Ghez. "I've never been nervous before," he says. "I get on stage in front of hundreds of people. I applied to MIT. I wing everything. But this made me nervous."

Continue ReadingWillamette Week Webmaster Invited to Prestigious TED Conference

Matt Singer, formerly a staffer at the Ventura County Reporter, moved up the coast to Portland in October with hopes of landing another alt-weekly editorial gig. The Wall Street Journal reports that Singer's quest has been less-than-successful, and uses that anecdote as a springboard into a piece that details how cities like Portland are dealing with a continual influx of hipsters and fewer and fewer jobs. (A story BusinessInsider.com summarized as: "Hipsters In Portland Can't Get Jobs Writing For Alt-Weekly Newspapers.") Willamette Week gets a shout-out in the story as well, for its new "Restaurant Apocalypse" column, which keeps track of the city's myriad restaurant closings.

Continue ReadingRecession’s Latest Victim: Hipsters?

In a blog post on the struggling newspaper business, the New York Times columnist points to WW as "an example of how a small paper" has successfully undertaken investigative and watchdog journalism. But Kristof seems to think the Portland alt-weekly is a rare bird: He adds that small news operations -- especially websites -- can't "undertake major investigations, partly because they're enormously expensive with uncertain results."

Continue ReadingNicholas Kristof: Willamette Week Plays an ‘Important Watchdog Role’

The upcoming film based on Beverly Cleary's classic children's book series will be set in Portland, but it is being shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. So how do the set designers hope to replicate Portland in Canada? With Willamette Week news boxes, of course. "The set design department contacted WW publisher Richard Meeker last week, requesting permission to create replicas of WW's blue boxes to use in their streetscapes," the alt-weekly reports. The film may also feature Ramona's dad looking for work via WW's classifieds.

Continue ReadingWillamette Week To Play Role in ‘Ramona and Beezus’

The Portland, Ore., alt-weekly was the latest to announce company-wide salary reductions yesterday. Effective March 16, staff pay will be reduced by 8 percent, while owners Mark Zusman and Richard Meeker will reduce their own pay by 25 percent. The move was made to keep the paper profitable for the balance of 2009. At the same meeting, Meeker, who is WW's publisher, announced that this week's paper was the largest since November and that ad sales for the spring appear ahead of budget.

Continue ReadingWillamette Week Introduces Cost-Cutting Measures

Portland attorney Robert L. Wolf's case boils down to this: Yes, I had sex with a 16-year-old girl, but she wasn't brain damaged. According to The Oregonian, Wolf claims that Willamette Week published stories about his 1988 incident with a minor that "falsely referred to the girl as 'brain damaged.'" Wolf says he demanded a retraction and editor Mark Zusman agreed in 1996 to eliminate references to brain damage in WW's subsequent coverage of the case, but that in March 2004, the paper published a story reporting that the girl had suffered "neurological damage." Wolf is asking for up to $58 million for alleged defamation, false light, breach of contract, fraud and intentional infliction of severe emotional distress. The Oregonian notes that "(t)he statute of limitations may have run out on some of those claims, because the article was published nearly five years ago."

Continue ReadingAttorney Sues Willamette Week for Defamation

"After last week, Portland's politicians may think twice about trying to put one over" on Willamette Week's Pulitzer-winning reporter Nigel Jaquiss, according to Newsweek reporter Winston Ross. On Jan. 19, Jaquiss broke the news that Portland mayor Sam Adams had sex with an 18-year-old legislative intern and then lied about it. Newsweek notes that WW trumped other news outlets that were pursuing the story: "Jaquiss's scoop is significant not only because it represents the second huge political figure his journalism has humbled in a period of four years, but also because of whom he beat out to get the story: the much larger and much more heavily financed Oregonian."

Continue ReadingNewsweek Does Tick-Tock on Willamette Week’s Sam Adams Scoop