It's a nerdy, populist idea: folks in the audience of a lecture often know just as much as the speaker, so why not have everyone contribute? It's called an unconference [wiki], and the idea is to democratize the convention experience. AAN will experiment with an UNconference by hosting a special, free-wheeling session on "Blogging for Journalists," hosted by web director Laura Fries. She'll guide the session with an outline of topics, soliciting best practices contributions from UNconference attendees, and, of course, blogging the results on the community convention blog at Portland2007.AAN.org. To get involved, pop over to the convention blog.
In this week's installment: Dubious sub-prime lenders, Philly's mayoral madness, going car-free, domestic partnership's inherent inequality, carbon farming, witnessing an execution, and more.
As advertising revenues for many print products stagnate or worse, most publishers are seeing enormous growth in online ad revenue. That's the good news. But as Editor & Publisher notes, many papers are grappling with how to grow online revenue quickly enough to replace lost print sales. The three big issues yet to be resolved in the digital transition, as seen by E&P, are that there is no "universally accepted norm" for audience measurement; behavioral targeting is still a fledgling practice; and "experiments in paid content are so few, and far from resounding successes."
As the dust settles from Village Voice Media's sale of the Express to a consortium of independent owners, a clearer picture of the new paper is emerging. The Berkeley Daily Planet reports that former Pitch Weekly publisher Hal Brody is the paper's majority owner, with 51 percent of the stock. Brody tells the Bay Guardian that, in addition to himself, editor Stephen Buel and Monterey County Weekly's Bradley Zeve, there are three out-of-town investors in the paper. He also says that the Express' joint ad sales agreement with VVM's SF Weekly will continue "indefinitely," and that the paper will continue to be represented in national ad sales by Ruxton. Meanwhile, Buel tells the Daily Planet that VVM "doesn't do well in places with competition." He adds: "If you look at the paper in the past year or so, you will see that it has gotten a lot thinner ... they didn't do well here." Buel also says that while the Express remains a defendant in the Bay Guardian's predatory pricing lawsuit, VVM agreed to assume all responsibility for the litigation. Finally, Buel writes on the Express' blog that more changes are afoot: a 5,000 bump in circulation and a tightening of the distribution area. He says the new owners also plan to address "changes to the format and design of the newspaper [that] made it a far less hospitable home for small advertisers, and placed limits on our community news coverage."
Learn what your peers think by signing up for an editorial critique at the AAN convention in Portland. You'll have an opportunity to sit down with an editor or two from similarly-sized papers and hear how your paper reads. In turn, you will read three issues from their papers and offer the same feedback. If you are interested in participating, contact Richard Karpel at rkarpel (at) aan.org by Friday, June 1.
OC Weekly placed second in the General Excellence category in the annual awards sponsored by The Missouri School of Journalism. "The Weekly contains all the usual alternative elements -- the reviews, the listings, the personals ads," the judges said. "What makes it stand out and makes it a winner, though, are the deeply reported and powerfully written centerpiece stories. These have both substance and panache." In addition, LA Weekly had two finalists; and the Boston Phoenix, East Bay Express and Seattle Weekly each had one. The winners were announced today.
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