Village Voice Media new media director Bill Jensen says 40 percent of the company's pageviews are coming from the blogs on the newspapers' sites, up from 20 percent a year ago. He also tells TechCrunch VVM is on track to bring in $20 million in online revenues this year, nearly double from 2008. This figure, however, still represents barely more than 10 percent of VVM's revenues.
The Creative Loafing CEO tells Editor & Publisher that bankruptcy has given the six-paper chain the opportunity to speed its transformation to digital publishing and to cut its costs. He says that his staff is spending 90 percent of its energy on the web and the other 10 percent on print -- which would be impossible without bankruptcy. "Everyone in the business knows print pays the bills, but most folks don't understand that digital contributes to the profits," he says. In a pre-Chapter 11 company, "the profit expectation baked into the capital structure is entirely based on maintenance of historical print profit margins." Eason also says he expects CL to emerge from bankruptcy this summer.
Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach have a handful of contenders in the Society of Professional Journalists' 59th annual Green Eyeshade Awards. Miami New Times has five finalists, and Broward-Palm Beach has three, in a variety of categories, from Public Service to Sports Commentary. The Green Eyeshade Awards is a regional journalism competition covering Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. Winners will be announced this summer.
Matt Singer, formerly a staffer at the Ventura County Reporter, moved up the coast to Portland in October with hopes of landing another alt-weekly editorial gig. The Wall Street Journal reports that Singer's quest has been less-than-successful, and uses that anecdote as a springboard into a piece that details how cities like Portland are dealing with a continual influx of hipsters and fewer and fewer jobs. (A story BusinessInsider.com summarized as: "Hipsters In Portland Can't Get Jobs Writing For Alt-Weekly Newspapers.") Willamette Week gets a shout-out in the story as well, for its new "Restaurant Apocalypse" column, which keeps track of the city's myriad restaurant closings.
Fort Collins Now is publishing its final issue this week, the Coloradoan reports. The paper was founded in 2003 as Fort Collins Weekly by AAN veterans Joel Dyer and Greg Campbell and sold to Nevada-based Swift Communications in 2007, which changed the name to Fort Collins Now. After the ownership change, Dyer and Campbell both remained involved with the paper, although they took on lesser roles. "It was clear that we have given Fort Collins Now a good length of time to see if it could turn a profit. It was really clear it wasn't happening," Campbell says. "It seems like the opportunity with Swift sort of delayed the inevitable." The weekly becomes the latest alt-style paper to close down in Fort Collins. In 2006, the AAN member Rocky Mountain Bullhorn ceased publication, and in 2008 the Rocky Mountain Chronicle did the same.
Jonathan Meador, a freelancer for the Louisville alt-weekly, was covering a local Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner last week when he was assaulted by local businessman and GOP activist J.D. Sparks, who was apparently trying to get the reporter to stop videotaping the event. Meador will pursue charges of fourth-degree assault and menacing, both misdemeanors, against Sparks.
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