Editor Pete Kotz says the two ad department employees had been out drinking and were just "trash-talking over the phone." Cleveland Free Times Editor David Eden claims they threatened to murder a Free Times employee and rape his wife. Whatever it was, it's now in the courts. Adam Simon and Brian LeBlanc face charges of aggravated menacing, telecommunications harassment and making threats over the telephone, The Plain Dealer reports.

Continue ReadingTwo Cleveland Scene Employees Charged With Threatening Competitor

AAN members scrambled to keep operations running after the massive Aug. 14 blackout that plunged 50 million people into darkness across the U.S. and Canada. "This was a disastrous scenario,” Grant Crosbie, ad director for NOW Magazine in Toronto tells AAN News. But most papers had flexible printers and were fortunate that the power failure occurred on a Thursday, after that week's issue had already hit the streets.

Continue ReadingWhere Was AAN When the Lights Went Out?

The Association for Women in Communications grants Martin Kuz of Cleveland Scene a Clarion Award for his story, "The Wal-Mart Menace" in the Newspaper Hard News Story category. Geri Dreiling of Riverfront Times also picks up a Clarion Award in the Newspaper Feature Story category for "Nasty Boys."

Continue ReadingNew Times Papers Win Two Clarion Awards

Gary Leonard, a veteran freelance photographer whose work has appeared in LA Weekly, LA Reader, New Times Los Angeles and LA CityBeat, kept his gubernatorial petition in his shirt pocket and whipped it out at enough shoots to get on the recall ballot, the Studio City Sun reports. Leonard is scheduled for the Tonight Show Sept. 22, and tells the Sun, "I even impressed my parents."

Continue ReadingPhotographer on California Recall Ballot

James E. Dible becomes the first non- member of the Mead family to head the Erie, Pa., publishing company that owns majority stakes in AAN-members Cleveland Free Times and the Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO), as well as the daily Erie Times-News, Editor & Publisher reports. Dible, 60, helped start Cyberlink, an Internet company, and the paper's GoErie.com Web site. He replaces Michael Mead, 65, who is retiring.

Continue ReadingNew CEO at Times Publishing Co.

In a fitting tribute, the paper dedicates the Best of New Orleans issue to its former ad director, who succumbed to cancer earlier this week. “Sue represented the best of Gambit,” says publisher Margo DuBos. “In a lifetime, you can only hope to know someone as wonderful as Sue.” News & Reviews’ Jeff von Kaenel, who worked with Crichton to organize AWN, says, “Putting it together was complicated because getting alternative newspaper publishers to work together is like herding cats. And Sue was one of the few people I met who could herd cats.”

Continue ReadingGambit Remembers Susan Crichton Martineau

Sue O’Connell and Jeff Coakley yesterday acquired the largest gay-and-lesbian newspaper in New England and a Boston neighborhood paper, according to Dan Kennedy. Coakley was the Phoenix’s director of classified advertising in the mid ’90s; O'Connell served two tours of duty as the paper's entertainment sales manager before leaving in 1998 to become associate publisher of Bay Windows, a 22,000- circulation publication targeting the region's GLBT community.

Continue ReadingFormer Boston Phoenix Sales Execs Acquire Local Weeklies

In a desperate bid to attract young readers "who have been deserting daily newspapers in droves and driving news executives to distraction," mainstream media companies "are churning out ... easy-to- read publications that are light on serious journalism, heavy on the partying scene, and, for the most part, free," reports Mark Jurkowitz. "I think it's a silly strategy because it's all about what they're putting out in daily papers that's driving [young] readers away,'' Nashville Scene's Albie Del Favero tells Jurkowitz. ''Daily newspapers in general write in a style that is not at all appealing to young readers.''

Continue ReadingDailies Experiment to Reverse Readership Trends

Point-of-view reporting. A hip, irreverent voice. In-depth coverage of local underdogs. And, of course, free circulation. New York Sports Express applies the elements of alternative journalism to create a new kind of paper: the local sports weekly. "No one else has done it -- and I like the action of creating new product," says President and Publisher Chuck Coletti. The paper's goal, says Editor Spike Vrusho, is "just to keep the way-too-serious sports fans laughing."

Continue ReadingNY Press Owner Launches New Sports Paper

Susan Crichton, former ad director for Gambit Weekly and a beloved member of this trade association, died of cancer early Thursday morning at the age of 44. "She left our world as she lived in it, calm and graceful," says her husband, Russ Martineau, who is left to care for the couple's 16-month-old son, Cooper. Crichton was a key figure behind the success of both Gambit and the Alternative Newsweekly Network, which she helped to found.

Continue ReadingAAN Sales Hero Cut Down in Prime of Life