Tele-Publishing International has reassured clients that money collected for online personals by bankrupt MCI should be distributed soon, Editor & Publisher reports. Many alternative newsweeklies use 900 numbers for voice personal ads. MCI will soon be the sole national carrier billing and collecting for these services.
Eric Broder, managing editor at the Cleveland Free Times, which turns 10 this week, remembers a time when the paper could hardly fill ad space. "The issue is 24 pages, consisting mainly of editorial. You don't want that. You want ads in there, and plenty of 'em. But this was the first issue. It's tough enough to sell ad space for a publication, and tougher yet for one that doesn't exist." Broder reflects on the last decade of a paper that was one business deal away from never happening.
Media critic Michael Anft announces he is ending his 20-year on-and-off relationship with Baltimore City Paper and retiring "to flip through heretofore-unread copies of The New Yorker and Harper's." Anft takes a parting shot at "the mostly uninspired local product we unfortunate viewers/readers/listeners have spewed at us."
Illinois Times has hired Patrick Arden, former managing editor of the Chicago Reader, as editor. The paper has also moved to a new address, redesigned its cover, consolidated entertainment listings, and changed its tag line. “The capital city’s newsweekly” expects fourth-quarter performance to be strong, says Associate Publisher Sharon Whalen.
Advertising staff at LA Weekly are to vote Friday on whether to join the union that already represents editorial employees at the alt-weekly. Editorial staff are shocked that management is resisting extending union representation to ad staff because the paper has always had an ardently pro-union editorial stance, reports the Los Angeles Times. Publisher Beth Sestanovich, however, tells the Times she pushed for a vote rather than the more pro-forma card check organizing because "while our editorial policy is pro-union, it also is pro-democracy."
AAN Associate Member Featurewell.com celebrates its second birthday having built its reputation on solid relationships with both writers and some 900 publishers, Tech Central Station reports. The online mag says Featurewell.com's sales are about $200,000 a year, and CEO David Wallis projects they will hit $1 million by the syndicate's fifth year.
E&P's Lucia Moses looks at a batch of new daily-owned youth market publications in the works, from Gannett in Lansing, Mich., and Boise, Idaho, and from the Tribune Co., in Chicago and on Long Island. Reaching young readers is a delicate art, as alternative weeklies can attest. "The 'new generation' is newly minted every year," Chicago Newcity President Brian Hieggelke tells E&P. "Those of us who are writing about them ... the older we get, the less we should trust our instincts."
Earlier this year a Philadelphia City Paper writer received e-mails from one "Mr. Fantastic" offering information and pictures from within one of the Army's top-secret facilities, Editor Howard Altman writes. Now Maurice Threats, 21, an Army MP, has been indicted on charges of espionage and bribery. "This case came from calls that City Paper placed to us," Martin Carlson, assistant U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Pennsylvania, tells Altman. However, federal prosecutors won't confirm that Threats and "Mr. Fantastic" are the same person. [This is an updated version of last week's story.]
"Lefty weeklies are always bitching about the mainstream press," but they should look in the mirror, Peter Byrne and Matt Palmquist write in SF Weekly. Take "Project Censored," for example, "a hallowed fixture of the alternative press." They find nine of the 10 stories listed this year as under-reported or ignored have in fact received prominent coverage by mainstream institutions like the New York Times, and that even Mother Jones, a bastion of the left, has slammed Project Censored. SF Weekly's rival, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, each year gives the Project Censored story prominent play.
Our City Weekly of Clarksville, Tenn., twice an applicant for AAN membership, has fallen victim to the "War on Terrorism," which has emptied this military town of a third of its population, says Publisher Jan Massey. In its seven-year history, Our City survived a direct hit by an F-4 tornado, embezzlement by an employee, and aggressive competition from a Gannett-owned daily newspaper. Its last issue was Aug. 28.
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