The company, which owns Creative Loafing papers in Atlanta, Charlotte, Sarasota and Tampa, as well as the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning, the St. Petersburg Times reports. City Paper editor Erik Wemple reports that CEO Ben Eason discussed the filing with top company officials in a conference call this morning, and said that the bankruptcy filing would allow CL's six papers to establish a greater online presence while the company reorganizes its operations. A corporate memo on the filing says it "has little to do with the acquisition" of the Reader and City Paper last year. Eason also said that the move entails no liquidation or layoffs. In fact, the Chapter 11 filing will roll back editorial staff cuts at the papers, Wemple writes. MORE: Read more about the move from Creative Loafing (Tampa), the Reader, Crain's and Bloomberg News.
That's the rough plot sketch of Ambition, a play currently in South Florida theaters, according to Miami New Times. "Within minutes of curtain-up, it becomes apparent that [writer/director Jim] Tommaney knows nothing about the practices of alternative newsweeklies," New Times critic Brandon K. Thorp writes. "We critics do not dictate our stories, and our editors do not cower before us (quite the opposite). Nor do they glory in negativity (again, quite the opposite; editors love it when we can say something nice about the local arts community -- it is the community to which they have the most philosophical allegiance)."
Fast Forward Weekly, the alt-weekly in Calgary, Canada, published a story Sept. 25 that quoted a Calgary Member of Parliament making comments linking immigrants to crime in the middle of an election campaign. Lee Richardson made the comments in a telephone interview with the paper, and as soon as the story was published, it was picked up in the local and national media. The following day, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper dismissed the story as a ridiculous example of "gotcha journalism" -- even though the paper had phoned Richardson after the initial interview to ask him to clarify his remarks. (Richardson's retraction was included in the Fast Forward story.) The story even warrented a mention on Comedy Central's election blog.
The Georgetown Voice's nearly 3,000-word story on the alt-weekly looks at how it is evolving under the ownership of Creative Loafing, and how the paper is fighting to maintain its identity -- and market share -- despite having fewer resources. "You want to create a rich environment and then bring it down into the print," says CL CEO Ben Eason, who is currently focused on uniting the company's six papers as a national web presence. "Without a doubt, the web is a far richer environment than print." Editor Erik Wemple says he sees the paper a year from now as being "very, very, very much a web machine." But publisher Amy Austin adds that, while online advertising revenue is quickly growing for City Paper, it still only makes up approximately 5 percent of the paper's total revenue, which has been in decline. By 2006, the paper's net revenue -- traditionally around 15 percent -- had fallen to 4.7 percent.
Jody Colley left her position as advertising director at the San Francisco Bay Guardian to become publisher of the East Bay Express when the paper was sold by Village Voice Media to local investors in May 2007. Since then, the Express has been working on a variety of distribution-related changes: Introducing graffiti-painted art racks, fighting newspaper theft by hiring a private eye, and trying to distribute a higher percentage of papers indoors. Express president Hal Brody has even patented a system that prevents people from taking more than a few papers out of a news box at a time. Colley recently talked to AAN News about these and other developments. For more from Jody Colley, check out her Q&A with newspaper consultant Terry Garrett on his blog.
In a piece for Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, Craig Cox weaves a review of David Carr's The Night of the Gun with personal anecdotes about Carr (a former editor for the now-defunct Twin Cities Reader, City Pages' crosstown rival) and the Twin Cities alt-weekly scene of the 1980s. "Once you were accepted into the club as a freelancer or -- dream of dreams -- a staffer at one of the two local alternative weeklies, you were plugged into the local pop culture scene in a way no one else was," Cox writes. "You didn't have to be high or narcissistic back then to feel good about working six days a week, every week (as we did at City Pages) for three or four hundred bucks. It was kind of an exclusive fraternity."
While investigating a string of rubbish fires started in trashcans near bus shelters this summer, Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigators caught a break when they found a witness who saw a man with a copy of the Weekly sticking out of his back pocket leaving the scene. Arson investigator John Little found the alleged arsonist strolling down the street, carrying a ripped out section of the Weekly in his back pocket. Little says he also found a "time delayed device" wrapped in burnt pieces of the paper in the trashcan. "It was a real CSI type thing," says Little. "We recovered newspaper out of the trash container and opened it up and saw a matchbook device. The section that was ripped out matched the papers in his back pocket ... He would set the newspaper down there and go across the street and watch." The 64-year-old suspect has been charged with arson. "And to think I believed copies of the newspaper flew off the racks because our readers couldn't get enough of our Calendar section," writes Christine Pelisek. "Guess again!"
The satirical advice book that Weekly writer Carl Kozlowski wrote with Chicago-based standup comic Tim Joyce was actually originally published in August 2001. Back then, it was titled Life: The Final Frontier, and it was gaining steam as the authors made the press rounds to promote it, according to Kozlowski. Then came 9/11, and "book companies panicked and dumped on writers like us," he tells AAN News. The duo stuck with it, though, determined to have their book be a success. They wrote about 80 new pages of material on life amidst the war on terror and created a new version of the book, Seize the Day Job! The Humor Book Al Qaeda Kept You From Reading, which was released this May. For more, visit Kozlowski's website.
- Go to the previous page
- 1
- …
- 162
- 163
- 164
- 165
- 166
- 167
- 168
- …
- 753
- Go to the next page
