As we noted yesterday, Landmark Communications, which owns both Style Weekly and Port Folio Weekly, has hired investment bankers to explore the possibility of selling the company's holdings, which include more than 100 publications and other properties, including The Weather Channel. "Although I was disappointed to hear the Battens were exploring a sale, our readers will continue to get the best of in-depth, local reporting on news, arts and culture," Style editor Jason Roop says in a press release. Publisher Lori Collier Waran concurs, noting that readers, advertisers and other business partners can expect business as usual. "We just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and we're still going strong."
"Marya Summers is tired of hanging out in nightclubs, so she's quitting her job," South Florida Media Jobs reports. The New Times Broward-Palm Beach nightlife columnist is leaving to pursue an MFA in creative nonfiction. In this Q&A, she dispenses the notion that writing about nightlife is easy. "Most people are self-deceiving when it comes to who they are, so my column comes as a slap in the face," she says. "I've lost friends." Asked to give advice to the intrepid columnist who might want to replace her, Summers gets right to the point: "An expense account for a nightlife columnist is just incentive to drive drunk. Negotiate more pay instead of reimbursed expenses."
Annalee Newitz, who was culture editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian from 2000-2004 and whose Techsploitation column runs in many AAN papers, is now editing a new Gawker Media blog, Wired reports. i09, which tackles futurism and sci-fi, went live yesterday.
That's freelance writer Seth Hettena's take. "Week after week, I pick up the Reader hoping to find something worth reading over a cup of coffee only to fling aside moments later in disappointment," he writes on the Voice of San Diego website. He roundly criticizes the Reader for a variety of sins, saying editor and owner Jim Holman shows "contempt for his readers." He concludes: "The Reader is considered an alternative weekly, but it's not really much of an alternative to anything." However, not everyone agrees with Hettena's assessment, as the robust discussion unfolding in the story's comments section proves. "Thank God for the Reader and for the 164,000 members of its weekly audience who keep it alive and kicking the hell out of the bad guys in San Diego each week," says one commenter.
Landmark Communications, which owns those two Virginia AAN member papers, has hired JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers to "to assist in exploring strategic alternatives, including the possible sale of the company's businesses," Landmark's vice chairman tells the Roanoke Times. The company's 2006 sales figures were $1.75 billion, and it employs about 12,000 people at more than 100 publications and other media properties including The Weather Channel, the Times reports.
"Sandy was fresh from Texas, a tiny blonde in even tinier hot pants, with a big personality," the current Westword editor says of Widener, who she first met at Cornell in the '70s. Widener, who died with her husband and one of her daughters in a car accident late last month, went on to co-found the Denver alt-weekly with Calhoun and Rob Simon. "With each reminiscence," Calhoun says, "I keep wanting to reach for the phone to call Sandy, to utter a few words and be rewarded with a shriek. I'll get several numerals into the call before I suddenly remember that she's gone." There will be a service for Sandy, her husband John, and their daughter Chase in a few weeks in Denver, when daughter Katy, who was spared in the accident, is well enough to attend. In the meantime, a memorial site has been set up at johnsandychase.muchloved.com.
In crowning her as such, the New York Observer thanks the L.A. Weekly columnist "for reminding us that all good journalism comes, first and foremost, from obsession." Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily site has become the go-to source for coverage of the writers' strike, and has made this a defining moment in her career. "The biggest entertainment story of the year has also turned into the biggest story of Ms. Finke's career," the Observer reports. "She's demonstrated that one determined reporter -- with none of the support or backing of a media outfit, but also none of the entangling alliances -- can, in fact, beat the big guys at their own game."
On Monday, George Bush signed into law the first revision of the Freedom of Information Act in a decade, the AP reports. The legislation, which cleared Congress last month, creates a system for the media and public to track the status of their FOIA requests. It also establishes a hotline service for all federal agencies to deal with problems and an ombudsman. Under the new law, federal agencies would be required to meet a 20-day deadline for responding to FOIA requests.
Just after midnight on Dec. 29, graphic designer Dennis Ho was shot in the foot in an apparent robbery attempt. He didn't need surgery, lost no toes, and will return to work Jan. 9. Ho recounts his experience today in a blog post. "To have to use my own hands to inspect the rest of my body for gunshot wounds while knowing that there was a real possibility they were there ... that was a feeling more terrifying than anything I've ever experienced," he writes. "I will never -- never -- forget that feeling."
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