In honor of Sunshine Week, which is March 16-22 this year, the Reporter has launched "version 2.0" of MuckrakersGuide.com, "a toolshed of links and resources for digging up public records." The website began with a January cover story by Dave Maass and now features more than 200 links to databases and search engines that will help citizen watchdogs. The Reporter plans to continue growing the site, and welcomes all questions and additional links.
"There's more to the Bay Guardian-VVM fight than ill will and purple prose," writes Boston Phoenix media reporter Adam Reilly. "The two sides have predictably divergent takes on the merits of the outcome. But they agree that its legal ramifications go far beyond the Bay Area and the alt-weekly universe." Guardian publisher and editor Bruce Brugmann tells the Phoenix that the suit sets an example for small businesses everywhere. "Everyone can use our suit as a model and template for any big chain that's coming in and trying to predatory-price them," he says. But SF Weekly attorney Jim Wagstaffe thinks that if the judge grants the Guardian's request for an injunction for the Weekly to stop all below-cost sales as the case winds its way through the courts, "the result here could dramatically harm consumers. If every one of [a publication's] ad sales is scrutinized to make sure it's not, quote-unquote, too low, then what'll happen is, publications will raise their prices to avoid getting sued." The Guardian notes that interest will accrue on the judgment at a rate of 10 percent a year. "That means the Weekly and VVM will be paying $4,000 a day in interest for as long as they seek to dispute and appeal the jury decision," the Guardian reports.
"It's actually rather easy to go unrecognized as a critic," says Robert Sietsema, who's been eating and writing for the Voice for 15 years. "Most critics want to be recognized since they love having restaurateurs kiss their ass and bring them free food. The Voice pays for what I eat, so I don't need any free food." The critic talks to Gothamist in advance of the Voice's first-ever Choice Eats tasting event tonight in New York, which features some of Sietsema's favorites. They also ask him about the response to his recent much-talked-about story on "how bogus" the popular TV show Iron Chef is. Sietsema says "the funniest responses came from crybaby Iron Chef judges ... it was like poking a hornet's nest, and I'd do it again in a second."
On the heels of the presidential candidate's "testy exchange" with a New York Times reporter last week, Politico talks to some Arizona journalists who describe "a sometimes pugnacious politician whose media strategy is a far cry from joking asides and backslaps around the barbecue pit." Former Arizona Republic national editor Tina May, who now edits the Monterey County Weekly, recalls a Republic story on McCain's temper in 2006 that led to her reporter being kicked "off the bus." She tells Politico it's "a perfect example of how McCain people treated the Republic differently than the national media," which has, in exchange, often flattered the Republican senator. Politico says that Phoenix New Times' Amy Silverman -- "one of McCain's most persistent critics" -- documented the romance between McCain and the national press in 1997's "prescient" story, "The Pampered Politican."
Late last year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) put together a Digital Video Committee to try to "establish industry standards so agencies could compare apples to apples on a network by network basis," MediaPost reports. The committee presented findings from its first white paper last month in New York, and made the initial steps of defining some key terms and creating two working groups to further study ad format standards and core metrics. MediaPost reports that 120 companies are involved with the committee.
The New York Times had the research firm comScore conduct an analysis of the amount of consumer data that is transmitted to internet companies, and finds magazine and newspaper publishers comparatively collect very little, making them "increasingly at a disadvantage when they compete for ad dollars" online. "Some advertising executives say media companies will have little choice but to outsource their ad sales to companies like Microsoft and Yahoo to benefit from their data," the Times reports.
Ground will be broken on the new three-story building within the next two months, the Weekly reports. It will be the first office project in Palo Alto to be certified LEED "silver" -- a designation given when a building incorporates numerous environmentally sensitive features. "While it adds considerable complexity and cost, we wanted to use this project as an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to these environmental principles and to create a building that will be healthy and comfortable for our employees, as well as a model for future developers," Weekly publisher Bill Johnson says. Construction is expected to be completed by summer 2009.
Times-Shamrock Communications this week announced plans to begin passing operational control of the company to the fourth generation of the Lynett-Haggerty family. Four family members will join publisher William R. Lynett as chief executive officers, since they've completed the company's Management Development Program, a four-year track that provides future Times-Shamrock leaders with experience in each of its three major divisions as well as a year interning at an outside media company. The company, through its Times-Shamrock Alternative Newsweekly Group, owns AAN members Baltimore City Paper, Metro Times, Orlando Weekly, and the San Antonio Current. Of the new CEOs, Scott Lynett and Bobby Lynett spent time working at City Paper; while George V. Lynett Jr. put in three years at the Current. In addition, City Paper promotions manager Greg Lynett will now take the helm as publisher of The Citizens Voice in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
City Paper and Philadelphia radio station Y-Rock On XPN have each picked eight local bands to go head-to-head in the first "Philly Rock Shootout." The voting began this week, and the band that receives the most votes from each side will face off next week. The winner of that contest will be invited to play a showcase at this year's AAN Convention, to be held June 5-7 in Philly, as well as a Y-Rock festival. In addition, if City Paper wins, it gets to run the radio station for an hour; but if the alt-weekly loses, it will turn over a full page of its music section in an issue to Y-Rock.
A rash of free newspaper heists is "making unlikely allies of Bay Area alternative publishers, whose intense competition over the years has seemed as much personal as a matter of business," Editor & Publisher reports. East Bay Express publisher Hal Brody has organized a group of free-paper publishers that is taking the thieves on with a two-front strategy: finding an aggressive DA who recognizes the real value of a free-circulation newspaper, and going after the recyclers who look the other way, according to E&P. Brody says he wasn't aware how bad the problem was until he and others bought the Express from Village Voice Media last year. "In one heavily trafficked area, where we lay out literally thousands of papers at dawn, we'd get calls from readers at noon that there were all gone," he says.
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