In a short blog post on the new Nation Investigative Fund website, Joe Conason says Paul Knight's 2009 story on problems with the Toyota Prius is just the latest example of alt-weeklies -- "those hippie outposts of the old print media" -- "provid[ing] an important outlet for investigative stories that are far ahead of their mainstream competitors." While Conason is certainly right about alts often getting a head start on big stories like the Prius problems, he is wrong about one thing: The story in question originated in the Houston Press, where Knight is a staff reporter. It was reprinted in the OC Weekly and a few other VVM papers.
A San Francisco judge today heard arguments on whether SF Weekly should be forced to give half of its advertising revenue to the San Francisco Bay Guardian as part of the Guardian's continuing efforts to collect on the 2008 judgment in the predatory pricing suit between the two papers. The judge issued a "late tentative ruling" that suggested he will do just that, and he said he will give the final ruling soon. Meanwhile, the Guardian has asked a judge to add Village Voice Media, LLC and Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC to the companies that make up the Weekly's parent company in the judgment. (When the Guardian's suit was initially filed, the Weekly was still owned by pre-merger New Times.) A hearing on that matter has been set for March 12. The Weekly has said it is waiting to make any payments to the Guardian until it exhausts its appeals. MORE: Seattle Weekly wonders why The Stranger is sending a reporter to San Francisco to cover this, when Stranger editor Dan Savage's sex column runs in many papers that SF Weekly's parent company owns.
The Observer recently unveiled a redesign that was overseen by Austin-based Em Dash. "The challenge was to create a template that could be produced by one part-time art director with a $450 art budget per issue," Robert Newman writes. "The result: a sharp, smart, right on, low-budget, high-impact design, perfect for the magazine's mix of muckraking reporting and liberal politics." The Observer has also launched a redesigned website.
The St. Louis chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has elected RFT founder Ray Hartmann as one of seven people it will induct into the St. Louis Print Hall of Fame next month.
Brian Stauffer has received the Society of Illustrators' highest honor for a cover he conceived for Phoenix New Times. The winning illustration will be printed in a hard-bound book later this year. "I can't really describe how surreal this experience is for me, given that I started out in this business 18 years ago assigning illustrations to the industry legends I now consider close friends," Stauffer writes on his blog.
While the economic downturn hurt the paper a bit, Press publisher Jed Morey tells CNN Money there were no mass layoffs -- and the paper was back in the black by the end of last year. Morey pegs the Press' success in part to the decision of Long Island's daily paper Newsday to go partly behind a paywall last year. The Press seized the opportunity and began running more general news on the web, to appeal to those who might not pay for Newsday online. Since then, Morey says traffic has gone up 600 percent. "It is not about a newspaper, it is not about the physical product or even the experience. It's about the quality of the journalism," he says. "If you stay true to that, we think that there is several different places you can go with that. The web being one of them."
Longtime Dig art director Tak Toyoshima has put a collection of his "Secret Asian Man" comic strips together in his first book, Secret Asian Man: The Daily Days. The book features every single daily comic strip he produced for over two years of syndication with United Feature Syndicate. "My goal was never to get picked up for syndication in daily papers but when it happened, I took a good look at what was out there and was shocked," he tells former Dig colleague Craig Kapilow. "SAM was touted by United Features as being the first daily syndicated comic strip featuring an Asian-American lead, which was unbelievable and sad at the same time." MORE: Ever wanted to see video of a topless porn starlet setting a book of comics on fire? You're in luck, thanks to the latest "Comic Book Witch Hunt" video from Nick Gazin, in which Ryan Keely sets The Daily Days aflame. (Depending on where you work, this may or may not be NSFW.)
Due to potential weather-related mail delays, the deadline for hard copy submissions has been extended to Tues., Feb. 16. Entrants submitting payment with their entries will also have until that date to submit payment.
- Go to the previous page
- 1
- …
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- …
- 968
- Go to the next page
