At a debate held in a local bar over the weekend, Seattle mayoral candidates Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan were given one minute to answer each question, with the option of being granted a time extension ... if they took a shot of whiskey. Weekly managing editor and debate co-moderator Mike Seely tells KING 5 News that the forum was designed to get the candidates to show off their personalities instead of relying on the usual sound bites, and also to bring the race to a new audience. "We figure we had a captive audience that had about no interest in politics, and we figured we'd force feed them politics," Seely says.

Continue ReadingSeattle Weekly’s Mayoral Debate Helps Candidates Reach New Audience

"Sales may be flat, bookstores may be struggling and book sections may be dying, but the critical conversation about books continues to be robust, intelligent and adventurous," former San Francisco Chronicle book critic Patricia Holt writes on Huffington Post. She points to six websites as proof, including AltWeeklies.com, of which she writes: "If you're weary of the received wisdom of official book review sites ... here is a treasury of refreshing and often unpredictable takes from alternative weeklies all over the country."

Continue ReadingBook Critic: AltWeeklies.com is Part of a ‘River of Critical Energy’ Online

"It's funny how the national media has jumped all over this," Patricia Calhoun writes of the attention being given to the paper's quest to hire a freelance critic to review medical marijuana dispensaries. But while most outlets have taken a "light, fun" tone to the story, she says the issue is serious business in Colorado. "There's one aspect of our search for a reviewer that's not funny: How very, very important easy access to quality medical marijuana is for so many people," Calhoun writes.

Continue ReadingWestword Editor: Pot Critic Story is ‘Very Serious’

Ted Rall has teamed up with Pablo G. Callejo for The Year of Loving Dangerously, which is based on Rall's experience getting arrested, dumped, expelled and evicted in New York City in 1984. It's Rall's first collaborative effort, and it hits stores next month. "Year is an allegory for the economic collapse, showcasing what can happen to anyone, even a white Ivy-educated male, who suffers a run of bad luck," Rall writes. "It's also a shot across the bow of other male graphic artists who wallow in self-pity and alienation." The Washington Post's Michael Cavna says the book is "a little bit Midnight Cowboy in tone, and part The Graduate."

Continue ReadingTed Rall Releases New Graphic Memoir

According to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines released yesterday, bloggers who review products should in many cases disclose when those products are given to them for free, but traditional journalists usually don't need to. The guides -- which call for a case-by-case analysis of whether disclosure is required -- are not enforceable, but "serve to put marketers on notice about the type of activity the FTC will consider deceptive," Online Media Daily reports.

Continue ReadingFederal Trade Commission Rules Bloggers Should Disclose Freebies

Finke gets the New Yorker profile treatment this week in a nearly-8,000 word piece with the subheadline: "Why Hollywood fears Nikki Finke." Finke says the story is "an amusing caricature, only occasionally true but hardly insightful." She adds: "Still, I'm relieved that The New Yorker didn't lay a glove on me. I found Tad Friend, who covers Hollywood from Brooklyn, easy to manipulate, as was David Remnick, whom I enjoyed bitchslapping throughout but especially during the very slipshod fact-checking process."

Continue ReadingNew Yorker: Nikki Finke is ‘a Combination Town Crier and Volcano God’