The World's Online Marketplace and craigslist, an online community featuring classifieds and forums (www.craigslist.org), announced today that eBay has acquired a preexisting minority ownership interest in craigslist of approximately 25%. The resulting relationship will allow eBay and craigslist to share expertise, resources, and creativity on behalf of online communities everywhere.

Continue ReadingEBay Acquires 25 Percent of Craigslist

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll waxes nostalgic about his stint as a replacement editor and West Coast editor for the New York City alt-weekly 30 years ago. He fondly remembers those days of lothario limeys, noisy Village cafes and fierce internecine battles. He worked back then with Richard Goldstein, the Voice's recently departed executive editor, whom he describes as "a cutting-edge rock writer, a significant figure in gay rights journalism, a funny, eager, smart, loyal, sometimes even puppyish, fondly remembered former colleague."

Continue ReadingCalifornian Remembers Golden Days at Village Voice

Some hip-hop admen are following the path to Madison Avenue laid down by entrepreneurs like Russell Simmons and Sean Combs, who was previously called Puff Daddy and is now known to fans as P. Diddy. Mr. Simmons is the founder of Def Jam Records, and Mr. Combs, whose ad company, Blue Flame Marketing and Advertising, part of his Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group, has taken on outside campaigns for, among others, a fragrance for Calvin Klein called Craze.

Continue ReadingHip Hop Admen

The satirical weekly will start circulating a free print edition in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sept. 2. In addition to carrying stories published on its Web site, The Onion will print local reviews and calendar listings, the same type of content for which City Pages, an AAN member in the same market, is known. The Onion president Sean Mills claims that readers of the humor paper are significantly younger than readers of alternative weeklies. According to the Star Tribune, The Onion is looking next to start papers in San Francisco, Boston and Austin, Texas.

Continue ReadingThe Onion to Launch Twin Cities Edition

Patrick Best, a former ad salesman at Creative Loafing Atlanta, will launch The Sunday Paper next month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. He hopes to reach affluent 25- to 44-year-olds tired of what he perceives as some alternative weeklies' left-leaning and pessimistic slant. "Being an American and living in the United States is a good thing," he says. "We will not be constantly, ad nauseam, critiquing it to the point people don't feel good about it." Fifty-thousand copies of the paper will be distributed each Saturday in the city's high-rent ZIP codes and northern suburbs.

Continue ReadingNewsweekly for Upscale Young Adults to Launch in Atlanta

Jeremy Voas, editor of Detroit's Metro Times since October 2001, was fired last week, reports the Detroit News. He contends the dismissal was prompted by his disagreement with publisher Lisa Rudy over the paper's mission in general and its emphasis on special sections in particular. "I thought if the paper wanted to do more of that kind of thing they needed to hire a special staff to do more promotional issues," he says. Curt Guyette, news editor at the Metro Times, says Voas' departure will be addressed in Wednesday's issue.

Continue ReadingMetro Times Editor Fired

Following the latest faulty circulation report, this time from The Dallas Morning News, the Audit Bureau of Circulations is anticipating that more papers will follow suit. "Do we expect more to come forward?" asks Martha Dittmar, spokesperson for ABC. "Yes."

Continue ReadingABC Expects More Circ Scandals

The 2004 edition of annual media industry statistics reveals that the relationship between the time consumers spend with media and the amount of money Madison Avenue invests in those media is growing is growing increasingly exaggerated in favor of the oldest media. Print media outlets generate a far greater yield of advertising dollar relative to their share of consumer time, according to a MediaDailyNews analysis of the data from the 2004 edition of Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast & Report. Conversely, the analysis shows radio to be the most undervalued ad medium relative to consumer usage.

Continue ReadingStudy: Print Reaps Highest Ad Yield Relative to Usage

Analysts say spending on online adverts is set to slow, casting doubt over Google's prospects as it gears up for its stock market launch. Online ad sales will grow by just 11% in 2009, down from 65% in 2003, according to Jupiter Research.

Continue ReadingStudy: Online Ad Revenue to Drop