Newly elected Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), the first non-African American representative since 1974 from Tennessee's majority-black Ninth District, will keynote this weekend's staff-training conference, AAN announced today. Cohen served Memphis in the Tennessee State Senate for 24 years before replacing Harold Ford, Jr. as the city's congressman. For the first time since it premiered in 2004, attendance at AAN East is likely to exceed the total at AAN West, which was held in San Francisco in late January. MORE AAN EAST NEWS: Helen Sutton, who spoke in Little Rock at the 2006 convention and racked up one of the highest scores in the history of AAN's post-convention survey, has been confirmed as the sales-track speaker on Friday afternoon.

Those eligible to join the list include AAN-member publishers and senior managers, financial managers, design & production managers and staff, and electronic publishing and IT personnel. To sign up, login to this Web site and click on "Listserv Registrations" in the My AAN section of the navigation bar on the right side of each page. As with all of AAN's listservs, messages sent to the list are archived on the site and available for search by members of the list.

Kevin Rose, who graced the cover of Business Week last summer, will serve as the keynote speaker at the regional staff-training conference in San Francisco this weekend, AAN announced today. Rose is the founder and chief architect of Digg.com, a user-driven social content Web site, and he is not worth $60 million. Prior to founding Digg, Rose produced and hosted hundreds of segments on cable-television network Tech TV. Here's what he Diggs right now.

Former Creative Loafing (Atlanta) staffer Heather Kuldell, who started work at AAN last week, will be responsible for coordinating the association's annual editorial contest. The Washington, D.C.-area native started at Creative Loafing as an intern and worked her way through several positions, including listings editor, assistant A&E editor and music editor.

AAN members and others planning to attend the Jan. 26-27 regional staff-training conference in San Francisco now have until Jan. 9 to take advantage of early registration rates. The deadline for registering at the Miyako Hotel, the Japantown property that is hosting the conference for the first time, has also been extended.

The contest Web site opened for business on Friday, signaling the beginning of the competition in the twelfth annual awards contest. Four new categories have been added this year, three of which pertain to the Web. Other changes: The circulation cut-off between small and big papers has risen to 60,000, and entry fees have increased by $10, bringing them back to the level they were at earlier this decade. The deadline for entries is Friday, Feb. 2, 2007.

Alternative newspapers interested in applying for membership in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies have until Friday, Jan. 5 to submit an application. To learn more about what they may be getting themselves into, we encourage prospective applicants to first read our Membership Committee Guidelines (Word doc). If that doesn't scare you away, please contact the AAN office for an application.

Attendees bound for either of AAN's annual regional staff-training conferences can save on early registration, get hotel information and preview program schedules and speaker bios. Those headed for AAN West, to be held Jan. 26-27 at the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco, can go here. Participants in AAN East, to be held Feb. 16-17 at the Hotel Washington in D.C., click here.