AAN members voted on several key matters during the association's annual meeting on Saturday, July 17. Eleven seats on the Board of Directors were filled, three publications were admitted into the association, and a bylaws amendment allowing online-only publications to apply for membership was passed by an overwhelming majority.
Lukas Ketner -- whose Barack Obama illustration graced the cover of Willamette Week's 2008 endorsement issue -- says in the New York Times that he received "a lot of mileage" out of the cover, eventually leading to the launch of a comic book, 'Witch Doctor,' which will be released during this week's Comic-Con.
At the 15th Annual AltWeekly Awards Luncheon in Toronto, Gustavo Arellano of '¡Ask A Mexican!' announced the winners of AAN's editorial contest and taught the audience a wide range of Spanish vulgarities and insults.
As AAN's Annual Convention gets underway in Toronto, attendees and non-attendees alike can follow events as they happen with the hashtag #aan2010.
The Richmond, Va. based faux-alt Brick is closing its doors after four years of publication, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. One observer notes that the current issue has only one advertiser, a local horse-racing track.
Update: Style Weekly's Jason Roop first reported on Brick's imminent launching in April 2006 when he noticed a help-wanted ad for an "Alternative Weekly Coordinator" position. At the time, Roop reported that parent company Media General wasn't even sure whether its product would be news or advertising focused. One year later, Brick fired its editor as the paper attempted to expand from "a lifestyle and attitude publication" to an ill-defined broader market publication.
In an opinion column published yesterday, Boise Weekly editor Rachael Daigle affirms her paper's commitment to maintaining a wall between editorial and advertising. The column is in response to Chicago Reader publisher Alison Draper's recent declaration that her paper will "push" the line between the two. Daigle calls foul on the notion:
Blurring the lines between editorial and advertising is called advertorial. It's not journalistic, it's not ethical to pass it off as editorial content and it's the public that loses when editorial integrity is compromised.It just so happens that AAN editors will be discussing this topic during a roundtable session next Thursday in Toronto.
No matter how bad business was at BW during the heaviest part of the recession, we never once considered chipping away at the wall that separates our editorial and advertising departments. The day BW Publisher Sally Freeman announces her intention to "push" the line between editorial and sales will be the day I'll hand her my resignation. Thankfully, Freeman is BW's biggest protector of that line.
In a detailed account of the San Francisco Bay Guardian's efforts to collect its court judgment against SF Weekly, California Lawyer delves into the behind the scenes legal maneuvering taking place as Bay Guardian attorney Jay D. Adkisson "search[es] for the end of the rainbow."
The story points out that cases are currently pending in three separate venues -- the First District Court of Appeal, the San Francisco Superior Court, and the state of Delaware -- and that the award settlement has grown from $16 million in 2008 to an estimated $22 million today. The article also explains that the Bay Guardian hired Adkisson for his expertise in both protecting and recovering assets. Speaking on the roadblocks they've encountered so far, Adkisson says, "We've got our hook into them, and they are one big fish. The closer we bring them to the boat, the more they wiggle."
Andy Van De Voorde, executive associate editor for Village Voice Media, writes that June was "the biggest traffic month in the history of VVMH." Websites owned by VVM received sixty-eight million page views in June, an increase of seventy percent compared to the same month last year.
During a press conference held by the family of a missing Oregon boy, Willamette Week reporter James Pitkin -- who had earlier reported on the family's troubled history -- was asked to leave for failing to be a "team player." A reporter for the local daily, The Oregonian, was also escorted out. As Pitkin noted, the end result was that the two largest papers in Oregon had essentially been sidelined because the family didn't approve of the negative coverage.
More details have come to light on the CL, Inc. decision to fire long-time Chicago Reader editor Alison True. Speaking to senior editor Michael Miner -- who on Friday described True's firing as a "tragic misjudgment" -- Reader publisher Alison Draper indicated that the paper's next editor will be expected to collaborate more often with the business side:
"The editor of the Reader," said Draper, "has to work closely with sales to find innovative ways to take our fair share of the dollars that are shrinking and shrinking quickly." She promised me that she wouldn't "blur" the line between editorial and advertising, but she would "push" it. The distinction was clearer to her than it was to me.Miner goes on to explain that True was fired at a Starbucks after the paper's Best of Chicago issue came out. It was, Miner says, the "fattest, most successful issue in years, a triumph True and Draper should have been sharing in."
