On the heels of Epicurious.com calling Portland, Maine, "the new Portland, Oregon," Portland Mercury food writer Patrick Alan Coleman decided that he "quite like[d] the idea of a cross-country Portland food rivalry," and baited the Mainers with a blog post detailing why the West Coast Portland is the real deal for foodies. Portland Phoenix editor Jeff Inglis has fired back with his point-by-point rebuttal, noting the superiority of Maine's beer, ingredients, mushrooms and bartenders.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weeklies Start a Portland-to-Portland ‘Food Fight’

In a round table discussion with representatives of other Seattle news organizations, Tim Keck discusses how The Stranger fits in to the transformation of the news business. He says that 2007 was the paper's best year ever, and '08 was slightly down due to the tanking economy. While he says that The Stranger has "probably three times the number" of online readers, he notes that print circulation hasn't dropped that much either. "The media compan[ies] that can navigate different mediums [are] going to be the ones that survive," Keck says. "The thing that really moors them is no longer the medium -- a print publication -- it's going to be the community and the brand."

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Publisher Talks About the Web & the Future of Newpapers

Rand Carlson, whose cartoons have appeared in the Weekly for more than 20 years, talks to local TV station KVOA about why he loves his job. "It's like one constant joke after another," he says. "I keep experimenting, I keep twisting words around, seeing pictures in my head about what to make fun of."

Continue ReadingTucson Weekly Cartoonist Talks About His Work

Burst Media surveyed more than 4,000 web users in order to better understand how clutter impacts their experience and perception of advertisers. 75.5 percent of the respondents who remain on a site they perceive to be cluttered said they pay less attention to ads appearing on its pages. Nearly 30 percent of those surveyed said they leave a site immediately if they perceive it to be cluttered.

Continue ReadingStudy: Online Ad Clutter Hurts Ad Effectiveness