This Friday is the deadline for early registration for this year's AAN West conference, to be held in San Francisco Feb. 1-2. For AAN members, early registration is $75 per person (non-members pay $150). After Friday, both of those rates go up $25 per person. You can register online here. In addition to the four streams of programming (Business, Design & Production, Editorial, and Sales), the AAN West Planning Committee has some parties planned that are sure to please. On Friday night, the North Coast Journal will host a cocktail reception featuring the best in Northern California wine, cheese, and beer. On Saturday night, the San Francisco Bay Guardian will throw down at Element Lounge. Be sure to check the AAN West website for full details on events and programming, as well as updates as we get closer to February. The registration deadline for the Web Publishing Conference is Jan. 4.

Continue ReadingEarly Registration Deadline for AAN West is Tomorrow

Fifty alternative newsweeklies in the U.S. and Canada will publish stories this week to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol. The editorial package, conceived and shepherded by staff at Sacramento News & Review, includes a retrospective by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben commissioned by AAN, a look-back by Kyoto participant Ed Smeloff, a drubbing of ABC News Correspondent and global-warming skeptic John Stossel, and a look at the controversial views of Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg. Many of the papers participating in the project are also contributing their own stories focusing on local climate-change issues. Sacramento News & Review Editor-at-large Melinda Welsh says the anniversary was "a chance to reveal to millions of alt-weekly readers how little distance we've traveled these last 10 years toward a solution to this giant problem we've created for ourselves and future generations." Links to Kyoto Protocol Anniversary stories may be found at kyoto.altweeklies.com.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weeklies Commemorate Kyoto Protocol Anniversary

The 2008 AltWeekly Awards is now accepting entries. AAN's Editorial Committee has made several changes to the contest. For the first time, all entries in the Writing categories must be submitted as URLs or PDFs. The contest will only accept hard copies of materials in the Cartoon, Special Section or Design categories. In addition, the committee added two new categories, Innovation and Public Service, and eliminated four others: Ad Design, Format Buster, Website Content Feature and Wild Card. In the Cartoon category, all entrants will compete in one division. The contest website will close on the contest deadline, Fri., Jan. 25, 2008 at midnight (EST).

Continue ReadingCall for Entries: 2008 AltWeekly Awards

AAN's Editorial Committee will continue to work with staff to select the categories each year and supervise the contest, while Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism will take over the day-to-day activities. AAN decided to look into having a third-party administrator after receiving record numbers of participating members and entries since the contest went online three years ago. Medill was a great fit, since the school already had a standing relationship with AAN. "Ultimately, I want people to think of AAN and Medill the way they think of Columbia and the Pulitzers or Harvard and the Nieman fellowship," says Medill professor Charles Whitaker, who will work with AAN editorial projects manager Heather Kuldell on the 2008 Awards to ensure a smooth transition.

Continue ReadingMedill to Administer AltWeekly Awards Contest

This year's conference will be held Jan. 30 to Feb. 1 in San Francisco, and is designed for alt-weekly publishers, editors, electronic publishing personnel, and any other employees with responsibility for their paper's website. After two "big-picture" presentations by the New York Times' Nick Bilton and Tacoda Systems' Dave Morgan, the conference will be dedicated to practical, nuts-and-bolts programming on topics such as user-generated content, online video, blogging, tagging and social bookmarking, search-engine optimization, web analytics, social networking, legal issues and the mobile internet. For more information, or to register, visit the conference website.

Continue ReadingWeb Publishing Conference Program Set

It's time to recruit our next class for the Academy for Alternative Journalism, the training program for long-form writing and reporting that AAN funds every summer at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. To help spread the word, AAN is making available to members a display ad (PDF file) to run between and now and the Feb. 8 deadline. Feel free to amend the size of this ad to support your format, add your logo, or add additional language urging interested applicants to contact your paper directly about the program. If you have any questions about AAJ, contact Donna Ladd at the Jackson Free Press or Debra Silvestrin at the AAN office.

Continue ReadingHouse Ad Targeting Potential AAJ Applicants Now Available

AAN is now accepting applications for the 2007-08 membership year. Alternative newspapers that are interested in applying for membership in the association can download an application here (PDF file). Applications must be received in the AAN office in Washington, D.C. by Dec. 31 to be eligible. As papers that have run the gauntlet know, the AAN membership process is rigorous. To learn more about how the association determines whether a paper qualifies for membership, we encourage potential applicants to read our membership guidelines -- there is a short version and a long version (Word doc). For questions about the process, papers should contact Debra Silvestrin at 202-289-8484 or debra (at) aan.org.

Continue ReadingAAN Membership Application Process Begins

If you thought your daily AAN.org newsletter looked a little different this morning, you were right. AAN has transitioned the daily and weekly AAN.org emails from staid plain-text to rich HTML. Newsletters for AltWeeklies.com will soon make the same switch, once the site redesign is complete. To sign up for daily or weekly AAN newsletters or to update your preferences, click here (if you are an AAN member) or click here (if you aren't an AAN member).

Continue ReadingAAN Introduces HTML Newsletters

This year's AAN West conference was organized a bit differently than years past: A committee of AAN members in Northern California did most of the heavy lifting, and they've put together a wonderful staff training program that includes business, design & production, editorial, and sales tracks. "The committee's focus was on staff training and providing an opportunity to network with others in the alt-weekly world," says the News & Review's Deborah Redmond, who chaired the committee that organized the event. The conference will be held Feb. 1-2 at the the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco. The early-bird registration rate is only $75 for AAN members and $150 for non-members (the rates increase by $25 after Dec. 7). Hotel options include the Cathedral Hill Hotel and the Kabuki Hotel (formerly the Miyako), which is also the site of the Web Publishing Conference that will immediately precede AAN West. (AAN members can also register now for the Web Publishing Conference, although the complete program won't be announced until next month.)

Continue ReadingRegistration for AAN West Conference Now Open