Yearly Archives: 2007

Read more about the article Arkansas Times Editor Talks About the Impact of Blogging on the Paper

The Times made the jump to blogging in 2004 at a time when many AAN papers had yet to do so with the simply-named Arkansas Blog. Since then, its website, which started as a niche resource for its print readers, has evolved into a daily must-read for just about everyone in the state, from politicians to daily newspaper editors and, with the additional in-house blogs Rock Candy and Eat Arkansas, music and food junkies. AAN News recently spoke with editor and full-time blogger Max Brantley on what blogging has done for the Times.

Continue ReadingArkansas Times Editor Talks About the Impact of Blogging on the Paper

After being ordered by a Superior Court judge to turn over more than 300 photos of a March 14 crime scene, an attorney for the Independent says the paper plans to appeal the ruling. Meanwhile, photographer Paul Wellman is scheduled to appear in court next week for contempt proceedings, according to the Independent. "We think the protections provided by California reporters' privilege laws do not allow the state to turn newspapers into prosecuting agencies on their behalf, and so we are fighting this ruling," publisher Randy Campbell says. In other legal news, a judge on Monday allowed the copyright case brought against the Independent by the daily Santa Barbara News-Press to go to trial. However, the Indy says the ruling was mixed: Though the claim of copyright infringement survived and will see trial in January, the judge "entirely dismissed the News-Press' three claims of unfair business competition, intentional interference with business advantage, and negligent interference with business advantage." The final claim -- that the weekly stole trade secrets from the daily -- will be litigated at a later date.

Continue ReadingSanta Barbara Independent Appeals Decision, Will Not Turn Over Photos

"Why can't I, as a fellow weekly-newspaper guy, muster up much sympathy for the Shepherd Express?," asks Weekly associate editor Bill Frost in response to yesterday's news that Milwaukee's alt-weekly was having some distribution issues involving the local daily (and its free weekly) and coffee giant Starbucks. "Because City Weekly has never been allowed into Salt Lake City Starbucks; at least the Express had a foot in the door for a while," he writes. "Now, just as Salt Lake City residents have for years, Milwaukee-ites will have to sip their overpriced Charbucks while reading an inferior knockoff of a weekly that has an exclusive, paid-for in."

Continue Reading‘Cry Us a River of Frappucino,’ Says Salt Lake City Weekly

"We were thrown out of Starbucks because of a deal the Journal Sentinel cut with Starbucks' regional office, where the Journal Sentinel demanded that the Shepherd Express be excluded from Starbucks newspaper racks," writes Express publisher and editor-in-chief Louis Fortis. The Sentinel-owned free weekly MKE then ran an ad claiming it was "the exclusive free weekly" available at Starbucks stores around Milwaukee. But a regional manager says "the decision as to whether a particular Starbucks carries the Shepherd will be at the discretion of each individual store manager." The controversy with the coffee giant comes as the paper celebrates its 25th anniversary. In this week's cover story, assistant editor Lisa Kaiser traces the Express' journey from "a monthly 'free expression magazine' by English majors at UW-Milwaukee" to what it is today.

Continue ReadingDaily Paper Tries To Get Shepherd Express Removed From Starbucks

Documents showing how subpoenas were obtained and executed during the grand-jury investigation into New Times are missing from a court file, which has led Judge Anna Baca to order the Maricopa County Attorney's office to turn over those documents by Wednesday and appear at a hearing next Monday, the Arizona Republic reports. At issue is if there was more wrongdoing during the course of the investigation than is currently known. The County Attorney's office has already admitted that prosecutors didn't notify the grand-jury foreman and judge within 10 days of issuing subpoenas in the New Times case, which is required by Arizona law. New Times writer Stephen Lemons asks: "Could the subpoenas be missing because they might offer proof that Wilenchik did not play by the rules?" He points to a new column by Michael Lacey which says that the special prosecutor personally demanded he and Jim Larkin be arrested, asked for the arrests of the paper's attorneys, and "sought tens of millions of dollars in sanctions, fines that would have bankrupted New Times."

Continue ReadingJudge Demands Records from Phoenix New Times Case

Dave Maass, currently a staff writer at the Santa Fe Reporter, doesn't think it was fair of AAN executive director Richard Karpel to single out Santa Fe's The Sun News in his inaugural column this week. "I've read the full piece four or five times now, and I can't find a single cogent argument why The Sun can't be an alternative newspaper," Maass writes. "What right does [Karpel] have to censor the words 'alternative' and 'newspaper' from being used, by his own admission, quite properly to describe The Sun? We're all standing up, speaking out, aren't we?" He adds: "Obviously, The Sun News isn't an alt-weekly in the contemporary conventional sense. But surely there's room in the taxonomy for them." More blog response to Karpel's column here, here, and here. UPDATE: Dave Maass has also posted a follow-up.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weekly Reporter Takes Issue With ‘Hey, That’s Not an Alt-Weekly’