Robinson Devor's film Police Beat, which chronicles a week in the life of an African-born Seattle bike cop, has been accepted for the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Competition, reports the Seattle Times. Devor co-wrote the film with Charles Mudede, whose Police Beat column in The Stranger provided its inspiration. Zimbabwe-born Mudede would visit police precincts, scan the log for interesting stories, interview the cops involved and incorporate their stories into his column. The film was selected into the prestigious competition from more than 700 submissions. (Free registration required.)

Continue ReadingFilm Based on Stranger Column Accepted to Sundance

On Nov. 9, America's second-largest newspaper publisher, Tribune Company, sued two of its ex-employees, as well as their current employer, New Times. Why? Because the employees in question, both entry- to mid-level advertising representatives, have agreements (that they don't remember signing) with Tribune that forbid their working for competing publications within a certain amount of time after leaving the company. An article in New Times Broward-Palm Beach calls the lawsuit an attempt to force the employees -- one a single mother, the other a divorced dad paying for his daughter's college education -- from their current positions.

Continue ReadingTribune Sues New Times Over Two Sales Reps

The trouble started in 1998, when the Chicago Sun-Times broke ground on a new printing press on the south side of Chicago. The start-up process was a "nightmare," the publisher said. The press malfunctioned, causing the paper to hit the streets late and leading to mass subscription cancellations.

Continue ReadingDailies Padded Circ Figures to Keep Ad Rates High

Requests for the Nov. 11 edition of The Stranger are pouring into the Seattle alt-weekly's offices, largely from readers who found a degree of post-election solace in the issue's unorthodox cover, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The cover features text in a series of colored bars that reads "Do not despair," before reassuring readers that they're part of a "diverse, dynamic, and progressive … urban archipelago" that voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. "People really responded to it," says editor Dan Savage, who wrote the cover text. Incoming requests for the issue number around 500, and that's just the beginning. "People want T-shirts, people want posters," says Savage.

Continue ReadingPost-Election Stranger Cover Becomes a Collector’s Item

Young people just aren't interested in reading newspapers and print magazines. In fact, according to Washington City Paper, The Washington Post organized a series of six focus groups in September to determine why the paper was having so much trouble attracting younger readers. You see, daily circulation, which had been holding firm at 770,000 subscribers for the last few years, fell more than 6 percent to about 720,100 by June 2004, with the paper losing 4,000 paying subscribers every month.

Continue ReadingDailies Continue to Lose Young Readers to Internet

Studies released yesterday by America Online and BURST! Media signal strong e-commerce sales this holiday season. AOL found that consumers who research and/or shop online intend to do 53 percent of their holiday shopping online, while BURST! reported that 57.6 percent of consumers surveyed online with a household income of $75,000 or more plan to do more than half of their shopping online.

Continue ReadingStrong Online Sales Predicted for Holidays

Scott Walsey, publisher of Creative Loafing (Atlanta), will leave the paper at the end of the year, reports CL editor-in-chief Ken Edelstein. Walsey has been at the paper for 26 years, and has served as its publisher since the 2000 merger between Weekly Planet and Creative Loafing, Inc. "He's provided employees with leadership, stability and a great sense of humor," writes Edelstein. "[Walsey is] a wise and decent person who did things like remind folks to place family and friends above work." CL's next publisher will be Scott Patterson, an experienced newspaperman who has published dailies, community papers and shoppers.

Continue ReadingCreative Loafing Publisher Stepping Down