Mediaspan, which calls itself "the leading provider of digital content management and national advertising solutions for over 4,000 local media properties," yesterday announced the addition of several new clients, including AAN members Philadelphia City Paper, Austin Chronicle, San Antonio Current, Salt Lake City Weekly, Arkansas Times and Jackson Free Press. "Our drive to deliver new, national revenue for our affiliate partners goes hand-in-hand with our goal of meeting the demands of national advertisers who want to reach a specific local audience, in markets large and small, across multiple types of media," says a Mediaspan executive. "Whether advertisers seek online display ads on newspaper websites, pre-roll video on TV websites or online radio audio streams, we can deliver."

Continue ReadingOnline Ad Firm Signs Six Alt-Weekly Clients

An unusual series of ads attempting to "break perceptions that Toronto is a bland, uninteresting city," will run in eight alternative newspapers in U.S. border cities, reports CTV Toronto. "We're trying to do something a little different, we're trying to play around, we're trying to be playful," explains the program manager responsible for the offbeat ads, which compare Toronto favorably with other international destinations like New York and Paris. City councillor Michael Thompson isn't convinced. "We send a lot of trash to Michigan, and that's not the only thing, unfortunately, that we're sending," he tells CTV. "This is, in my view, it's trash."

Continue ReadingTourism Ads Placed in Alt-Weeklies Cause Stir in Toronto

Abitibi Consolidated, which hasn't seen a profit in two years, and Bowater, which has been losing money since 2001, announced their marriage yesterday. The new company, AbitibiBowater, faces a U.S. newsprint market that has declined by 26 percent since 1999, according to the New York Times. An industry expert tells The Times that she expects more consolidation in the industry, and she believes that paper mills being built in China might drive down prices in their bid to capture sales in North America.

Continue ReadingLeading Newsprint Manufacturers Merge

Late last year, Richard Diefenbach was suspended from his job in Newport, Ore., for five days without pay, and accused of racial discrimination and sexual harassment for sharing a copy of Gustavo Arellano's politically incorrect syndicated column with a co-worker. Diefenbach tells The Oregonian that the incident had a deleterious impact. "I have to weigh everything twice before I say it now," he says. "I felt like my organization branded me as something I am not, a racist and a sexist -- a horrible person." Arellano says "Ask a Mexican!" is now syndicated in 21 weeklies with a combined readership of 1.3 million. CORRECTION: Arellano tells us his column is syndicated in papers with a combined circulation (i.e., not readership) of 1.3 million.

Continue Reading‘Ask a Mexican!’ Kerfuffle Leaves Employee ‘Feeling Leery and Hurt’

Seven Days' Peter Freyne was recently diagnosed with lymphoma and immediately began chemotherapy treatments. He blogged about this turn of events prior to being admitted to the hospital, and his post has attracted dozens of comments, making it a virtual get-well-soon card. Most of the comments are from readers and fans, but several state politicians and even the deputy police chief of Vermont's largest city have weighed in to wish him well, says Seven Days' online editor, Cathy Resmer. Freyne has been writing about Vermont politics since the state's new, socialist senator Bernie Sanders won his first term as mayor of Burlington in 1981. He brought his popular column to Seven Days shortly after the paper was founded in 1995.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weekly Political Columnist Blogs About Cancer Diagnosis

The New Democratic Party launched an attack on the head of the British Columbia's provincial government last week, based on information it learned in an article published in the venerable Vancouver alt-weekly, reports the National Post. In the article, the Straight's Russ Francis reported that Premier Gordon Campbell (pictured) and his wife own shares of stock in mining giant Alcan Inc., which does business with the state-owned water utility.

Continue ReadingGeorgia Straight Story Leads to Conflict of Interest Charges

User-driven social content sites like Digg and Reddit are becoming "traffic powerhouses you can't ignore," says search-marketing expert Danny Sullivan. In fact, their rise has given birth to a new discipline that Web publishers now must learn to master: Social media optimization. Sullivan argues that the social content sites, although they are not traditional search engines, are now more important in terms of driving traffic than non-Google search engines like Yahoo!

Continue ReadingExpert: Social Media “Search Engines” Deserve Publishers’ Attention