Dear AAN members,

Over the last few years, AAN Board Members have been discussing a possible name change for the organization. The reasoning is simple and important for our future growth as an organization.

Last year, with the addition of online only publications, we sought to answer these questions:

• Are we still a membership strictly made up of “weekly” publications; or rather are we a membership of news media organizations providing hourly, daily, and weekly content?
• In addition, do we want to limit our membership in the future to only those organizations that produce a weekly publications, or open up membership to organizations that provide the same kind of content we expect of member papers but do it solely online and daily?

Now, we need to take this one step further and implement a subtle, but important change to our name.

On June 2, AAN board members were sent a survey regarding a name change for the organization. Based on the results, a majority of the respondents supported a name change from “Association of Alternative Newsweeklies” to “Association of Alternative Newsmedia.” In fact, 93% of respondents “loved” or “liked” the proposed change.

Therefore, and in staying with our efforts to grow the organization beyond “altweeklies,” we will be asking the members to vote on this as well. Please note that this will not require a substantial amount of cost or effort on our part since we are staying with the acronym, AAN, and simply changing the word weeklies to the word media. What this will signify, however, is substantial; we will have shed our namesake past for a better future.

I am available should anyone have any questions about the process, the name change and how we plan on utilizing this change to help market our organization to a broader audience.

Jeff Lawrence

Boston’s Weekly Dig / DigBoston.com

Marketing Chair, AAN