Even resource-strapped smaller AAN papers are working hard to bring national election issues down to the local level. They encourage the participation of first-time voters with newspaper-sponsored voter registration drives and humorous presentations of election material. At AAN papers with larger staffs, more resources are devoted to following the candidates and digging up scandals. The Memphis Flyer and other AAN papers have broken stories that the mainstream media had to follow up on.
Ben Eason, CEO of Creative Loafing Inc., confirmed last week that his company's board has agreed to buy out Cox's minority stake in the alt-weekly chain, Steve Fennessy reports in Creative Loafing Atlanta. In addition to the Atlanta paper, the alt-weekly chain publishes newspapers in Charlotte, Tampa and Sarasota. Cox bought a 25 percent stake in Creative Loafing in 2000, but friction resulted when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a Cox-owned daily, launched its own free entertainment weekly last year. Eason says that if all goes well, the deal could be completed by mid-July.
According to the latest U.S. census, Latinos are now the country's largest minority group. With this in mind, the question of how alt-weeklies serve this important segment of the population becomes one of increased urgency. Marty Levine reports for AAN News on how papers from Miami, Fla., to Columbus, Ohio, to Orange County, Calif., are addressing the issue of Latino coverage in their area. It may surprise no one that, for each paper, the questions -- as well as the answers -- are unique to the community they serve.
As advertising springs back, here's something newspapers should keep in the back of their minds: Sixty-seven percent of marketers surveyed indicated that newspapers and magazines could do a better job selling themselves against other media, especially television, according to the Association of National Advertisers, which released its findings today.
