The story was percolating for some 20 years. Reporters pursued it but not far enough. And then, Jill Rosen reports in American Journalism Review, a feisty Oregon alt-weekly made a stunning revelation on its Web site May 6. Former governor Neil Goldschmidt, when he was mayor of Portland, had had sexual relations with a girl who was only 14. A lead from a state senator, followed by intensive records searches and interviews, helped Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss pull the story together.

Continue ReadingHow Willamette Week Broke Big Story on Oregon Ex-Governor

Last week, Avalon Equity Partners shut down New York Sports Express. "There was a struggle, and in the end someone in the accounting department reached for a knife," Matt Taibbi writes in New York Press, an AAN-member paper that is also owned by Avalon. The Express dared to take sports not too seriously, Taibbi writes, and Express editor Spike Vrusho recognized "that Karim Garcia, while not a very good baseball player, was a comic gold mine and needed to be in print as much as possible."

Continue ReadingNew York Press’s Sister Sports Paper Disappears

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel announced Monday it will start an entertainment- and lifestyle-oriented publication and companion Web site in the fall. The target age group is 25- to 34-year-olds. The still unnamed tabloid "will not be a news publication," Rick Romell reports in the Journal Sentinel. Shepherd Express, an AAN member, is also published in Milwaukee, Wis.

Continue ReadingNew Daily-Owned Free Weekly to Launch in Milwaukee

The last issue of The Local Planet, an AAN-member paper in Spokane, Wash., was distributed July 8. A year ago, publisher Matt Spaur's wife, founding editor Connye Miller, died, and Spaur said he no longer had the interest or energy to keep publishing. During the "feisty" paper's four-year run, it "poked at Spokane's conservative establishment and took readers on irreverent romps through the region's political, music and dating scenes," The Spokesman-Review's John Stucke writes. Spokane is home to another AAN member, The Pacific Northwest Inlander.

Continue ReadingOne of Spokane’s Alt-Weeklies Stops Publishing

Worried about its potentially crippling effects on tobacco marketers, and what they believe would be a dangerous step toward more widespread regulation of the advertising industry, The Association of National Advertisers on Friday blasted the U.S. Senate's decision to pass major regulations over tobacco advertising.

Continue ReadingANA Blasts Senate Tobacco Ad Restrictions

Jerry Saltz knows it hurts to be criticized, but, he tells ArtsJournal.com, "If all criticism is enthusiastic it sells the art world short." He remembers after he wrote his first piece for the Voice, on Kara Walker's "painful, uneven show" at Wooster Gardens in 1998, he was terrified he'd be fired. A collection of his Village Voice reviews and essays, "Seeing Out Loud," has been published by The Figures press.

Continue ReadingVillage Voice Art Critic Discusses His Craft and New Book

Tribune Co. disclosed further circulation misstatements at two of its newspapers Thursday, the latest lapses in a costly scandal that has resulted in heavy claims by advertisers and censure by the group that audits circulation.

Continue ReadingMore Circ Trouble for Tribune