It was cold outside, but almost 220 individuals braved the weather in Washington, D.C., to attend the AAN East regional conference. They were rewarded with lively seminars, networking opportunities -- and an invitation to write on the walls.

Continue ReadingAAN East Wrapup

Anyone "familiar with the alternative newspaper industry in Pittsburgh would have seen failure coming" at the Madison, Wis. faux-alt, argues Indiana University of Pennsylvania student Emily Jo Boots in the school newspaper. According to Boots, the Core Weekly train wreck was foreseeable because the paper was the brainchild of Catherine Nelson, the same publisher who oversaw the demise of both In Pittsburgh and Pulp in the Steel City. "It sounds to me like Nelson thinks that dumbing down a newspaper will make everyone want to read it," Boots writes after summarizing Core Weekly's business plan. "It seems that Nelson didn’t learn a thing when her business philosophy as a publishing consultant ran Pulp into the ground."

Continue ReadingStudent Newspaper: Core Weekly’s Demise Was Entirely Predictable