The Chicago Tribune's new youth-oriented tabloid hits the streets today, five days early. The Trib pushed up the start date to get out of the gate before rival Chicago Sun-Times' version of an "alternative," Trib media writer Jim Kirk reports. The Sun-Times tab will be called Red Streak, Kirk says.
In a letter to the Los Angeles Times responding to a column written by media critic David Shaw, AAN Executive Director Richard Karpel says Shaw's characterization of the alternative newsweekly business "is both inaccurate and misleading." Countering Shaw's assertions, Karpel claims AAN papers "are as unfettered as they ever were and far more independent than their competitors in the mainstream press."
Washington City Paper hasn't covered the D.C. area sniper attacks -- not one word, a decision Washington City Paper Editor Eric Wemple tells Philadelphia Weekly's Steve Volk he agonizes about every day. "We are in no position to do" hard news, especially outside the District, Wemple tells Volk. Even though he can post breaking news on the paper's Web site, he says "readers aren't trained to go to our Web site for a 34-car pileup on the Beltway."
In the post-Napster music piracy era, labels are holding advance CDs for the media until just before their release dates, Matt Borlik of Washington City Paper writes. "It's a concept so backwards, so self-defeating, so abso-fucking-lutely idiotic that only a major label executive could have thought it was a good idea," Borlik says. Not only that, alt-weeklies, which write more about music than any other media, are suddenly finding themselves completely off the advance release lists or having to accept streaming audio instead of CDs.
"New Times was a full-throated, outsized voice in a tremendously meek media town," longtime New Times LA columnist Jill Stewart writes in the LA Times. She says New Times is the only alt-weekly chain to "hit the news harder with each passing year" and charges other alties "have become increasingly soft and mired in out-of-touch 1970s-era liberal Democratic mantras."
On Oct. 3, New Times published a short news article about the lewd behavior conviction of Kevin Graves, a producer and television personality at KSBY-TV in San Luis Obispo. The conviction, handed down seven months earlier, never made it into the news until it appeared in New Times. Graves is married to Sharon Graves, a popular weather forecaster on the same station. When the New Times story broke, Sharon Graves abruptly quit her job and left SLO County with her husband and children. The public response to the family's sudden departure was overwhelming, with most callers and letter writers decrying New Times decision to publish the story. In this week's issue, New Times asks several journalists and local personalities: Was the furor the downside to aggressive journalism in a small community? Or was it a case of a newspaper publishing something that should rightfully have remained a secret in the interests of individual privacy?
"The co-opting of the 'underground' tradition of journalism into the more socially responsible and sales-friendly 'alternative' press is now virtually complete," Miami New Times' John Lombardi writes in response to a letter to the editor from Dan Sweeney, calendar editor of New Times Broward-Palm Beach. The '60s gonzo journalism was "a rancid upchuck onto the desks of the reactionary old fart editors of those times." Now he suggests that young writers like Sweeney should look at Al-Jazeera, the independent Qatar-based television station that doesn't ask permission to make everybody furious.
Several daily newspapers are planning to target youth with new publications aimed at 18-to-34-year-olds, but will they succeed? Editor & Publisher offers pro and con views: an unsigned editorial from this week's issue suggests why "da chainz" just might succeed; and E&P intern Chris Nammour argues that you can't teach a young dog old tricks.
Erstwhile media critic David Shaw mourns the passing of New Times LA, "even if it was often shrill and sometimes irresponsible," he says. While admitting that it's "difficult to generalize about the alternative press since some of the papers ... are so idiosyncratic as to defy categorization," Shaw reflects on how alternative weeklies have changed.
The Association for Women in Communications named Sarah Fenske, Cleveland Scene and David Holthouse, Phoenix New Times, feature story winners, while Willy Stern and Liz Garrigan of the Nashville Scene, and the New Times staff won Clarion awards for feature series.
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