"After last week, Portland's politicians may think twice about trying to put one over" on Willamette Week's Pulitzer-winning reporter Nigel Jaquiss, according to Newsweek reporter Winston Ross. On Jan. 19, Jaquiss broke the news that Portland mayor Sam Adams had sex with an 18-year-old legislative intern and then lied about it. Newsweek notes that WW trumped other news outlets that were pursuing the story: "Jaquiss's scoop is significant not only because it represents the second huge political figure his journalism has humbled in a period of four years, but also because of whom he beat out to get the story: the much larger and much more heavily financed Oregonian."
The Association of Free Community Papers' fourth-quarter member survey (not available online) showed many free-circulation community newspapers and shoppers finishing a difficult year with an exceedingly tough fourth quarter. Seventy-three percent of respondents reported that fourth-quarter revenue was down, compared to 66 percent that had reported a year-over-year sales decline in the third quarter. The decreases spanned the country, according to AFCP, but suburban markets were harder hit than urban and rural areas.
Chase, whose real name is Jason Garrison, worked in advertising sales at St. Louis' Riverfront Times before leaving in January 2007 to try his luck as a grappler with Ohio Valley Wrestling. Two months ago, he made a giant leap toward becoming a big-name wrestler when the WWE recruited him to attend the company's developmental school in Tampa, Riverfront Times reports.
"The cutback in cartoons has less to do with the budget than it does with page counts going down," Kevin Allman tells "Idiot Box" cartoonist Matt Bors. "What you see as $25 for a cartoon, the publishers see as potential ad space that could sell for 10x that amount." Allman says that in New Orleans, they ended up sticking with local cartoonists rather than nationally syndicated ones. "Their drawings are the equivalent of local news stories," he says. "And I try to treat them with as much respect as I do the columnists, but they have to suffer too with the smaller page layouts."
"Call me a pessimist, but I think relying on alternative weekly papers to sustain alternative comics after this week is a dream," says "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles" cartoonist Neil Swaab. He lays out three ways forward for working alt-cartoonists: a subscription-based model, more interactivity, and donations. UPDATE (Feb. 3, 1 pm): Swaab has removed the post due to what many saw as disparaging comments about web-based comic artists.
The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) says that unique monthly visitors reached a record of 67.3 million in 2008 -- up 12.1 percent over 60 million in 2007. But as Media Daily News reports, the big increases in traffic simply are not translating into increased online revenues. Fourth-quarter figures are not yet available from the NAA, but online revenues slumped 2.4 percent in the second quarter and 3 percent in the third.
Lloyd Dangle reports that The Stranger and Metro Silicon Valley have cut his "Troubletown" cartoon. "[The papers] said that they might bring Troubletown back when things get better," Dangle writes, "but for newspapers, I don't know anybody who thinks it's going to get better." Meanwhile, Max Cannon of "Red Meat" has posted "an urgent message" on his website, saying "the alternative comics apocalypse has begun."
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