"We will be a hard-hitting, good, clean paper that will carry non-offensive ads," says Rich Kuchinsky, ad director for Utah Weekly, a free paper that debuted last week along the Wasatch Front. "(A)dvertisers are wasting their money" in the rival Salt Lake City Weekly, Kuchinsky claims, because "Moms" and "families" are offended by some of the ads in that AAN-member publication. Kuchinsky tells the Deseret News, "We have no problem with 'men seeking women' and 'women seeking men,' and that's where it will stop."
"Can you trust an alternative newspaper over 30?" Creative Loafing Atlanta's Senior Editor John Sugg asks. Well, yes and no. In a column published in Weekly Planet Tampa, Sugg's old stomping ground, he says alt-weeklies may be greying and corporate but they're still kicking the dailies' butts. Mainstream media have "dumbed themselves down to the point of imbecility," Sugg says. "Maybe now the alternative press will stand and achieve its true greatness, revealing what the powerful don't want revealed." If they don't, Sugg's hoping some firebrand now in high school is waiting in the wings to create the next underground press.
Editor Pete Kotz eviscerates alt-weekly competitor Cleveland Free Times, saying its "relentless strife still makes for the best running sitcom in town" and laying odds Free Times will close. David Schneiderman, CEO of Free Times' parent Village Voice Media, in an e-mail to Kotz, calls the Scene's claims "untrue and outrageous." Free Times Publisher Matt Fabyan tells AAN News the article is "pathetic, desperate and sleazy." Now Free Times Editor David Eden is calling Scene Publisher Ramon Larkin, "badgering him about (Scene's) finances," Kotz reports. Payback may be in the offing.
Dan Kennedy, the Boston Phoenix's media critic, originally opposed publication of the video and photo of Daniel Pearl's grisly slaughter. Now that his paper has carried through with its vow to publish the images, Kennedy has changed his mind. "It's important to see the Daniel Pearl video because it's important to look into the face of the pure evil we're up against," Kennedy writes. "It's important to see it because merely reading a description of it cannot do justice to its full horror."
"Newspapers want the benefit of being read worldwide but not the responsibility that comes with it," an attorney told a federal appeals court June 3 in Stanley Young vs. The New Haven Advocate. The libel lawsuit by a Virginia prison warden is an appeal of a federal district court ruling in Virginia that granted jurisdiction because the Connecticut newspapers that he was suing published their material on the Web. AAN joined amicus briefs in support of the publishers in both Young and Gutnick vs. Barron's, a similar case before Australia's highest court. The case may be the first federal appellate ruling on whether a newspaper can be sued anywhere its Web site is read.
David Comden, group publisher of the renamed Southland Publishing Inc. (formerly Ventura Newspaper, Inc.), says San Diego is a “big-boy market.” The purchase of SLAMM, a San Diego music biweekly, gives Southland a chance to play in the big boys’ lot. Comden says it’s likely SLAMM will be transformed into a AAN-style alternative newsweekly.
Bob Norman, a staff writer for New Times Broward-Palm Beach, recently took home the 2001 Livingston Award for national reporting for his investigative series "Admitting Terror." The series revealed how incompetence and a skewed set of priorities at the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Norman's recognition is the latest notch in New Times Media's belt in what they are calling a "banner year."
Willamette Week columnist "The Nose," a.k.a. Mark Zusman and John Schrag, says AANies can party hardy, but may be suffering from a deep malaise. Ads are down and that strikes fear deep in the hearts of publishers of all stripes. "The alties have gotten more scared and less idealistic," the column sniffs. "One wag told the Nose that these two developments are not unrelated. 'Hey, schmuck,' he fondly told me, 'when times get tough, ideals are always the first to go.'" The Nose duo placed second in the column-writing category of this year's Alternative Newsweekly Awards.
Traditional approaches like special kids' sections or youth-oriented stories sprinkled throughout the paper aren't working, so newspaper chains are testing alternative strategies to snag the elusive 18-to-34-year-old demographic, Editor & Publisher reports. For example, Gannett is launching free weeklies this fall in Boise, Idaho, and Lansing, Mich. and others have tried free-standing publications circulated to high school students. Meanwhile, some media conglomerates have decided that print is not enough, and have added youth-oriented content via radio, broadcast and the Web.
Staff at the Dayton, Ohio paper have not been paid regularly since May 1, the local daily reports. Impact is one of the two remaining papers in the Yesse! Communications chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2001. Yesse! exec Kerry Farley says May 2002 was the paper’s best month yet, but that advertisers aren't paying up. "It’s a collections issue. But it’s also a problem with alternative newspapers in general," Farley said. The paper's editors have threatened to resign en masse.
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