At the Worcester's Stars dance benefit for Centro Las Americas held Saturday night, Allen Fletcher won the cha-cha category, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports. Fletcher beat out Police Sgt. Miguel Lopez and Worcester County Food Bank executive director Jean McMurray. The benefit, which took its format from the TV show Dancing With The Stars, paired local celebs with dance instructors, and gave the team a few weeks to get ready for the competition.

Continue ReadingWorcester Magazine Publisher is Cha-Cha King

The worldwide free daily publisher Metro launched this week a new service that automatically puts qualified bloggers on the company's payroll, integrating blog-creation tools with a complete solution for commission payments for the first time, Editor & Publisher reports. So far the arrangement is only up and running in Sweden. When bloggers achieve the requisite numbers of page views per month, a bank account is automatically created and a MasterCard sent to the author. The best blog posts can then be selected for publishing in the nationwide Metro Sweden paper and its corresponding website.

Continue ReadingFree Commuter Daily Integrates Blogger Tools & Payment Service

This week's "Big Fat Whale" strip by Brian McFadden shows Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi using a meat tenderizer to get rid of "the tenacious stain on the Justice Department," US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, killing him in the process. Writing on Time's Real Clear Politics blog, Tom Bevan gives his short opinion of McFadden's work: "This cartoon ... is not only unfunny, it's sick."

Continue ReadingTime Calls Alt-Weekly Cartoon on Gonzales ‘Sick’

Representing 90 AAN member papers and many non-members as well, 588 alties converged on Portland last weekend for a rousing 30th annual AAN Convention. There were senators, strip club tours, former US attorneys, marching bands, scores of informative sessions, and, of course, parties galore. If you missed it, or if you just want to relive your treasured memories, you can always head over to the first-ever official convention blog, which now features blog posts by convention attendees and AAN staff, as well as links to the many folks who wrote about the confab for their own papers or websites. If you've seen coverage we're missing, you can e-mail editor (at) aan.org.

Continue ReadingFarewell PortlAANd 2007, We Hardly Knew Ye

In the annual Society of Professional Journalists Utah Headliners Awards, reporter Ted McDonough took first in two categories: Best Newspaper Reporter and Government Reporting. Other first place finishes for the Weekly: Katherine Biele in Consumer Reporting; Bill Frost in Headline Writing; Ben Fulton in Personality Profile; and Shane Johnson in Criminal Justice Reporting. Winners were announced last Friday night.

Continue ReadingSalt Lake City Weekly Wins Six Utah Journalism Awards