Utah has liberalized its liquor advertising laws, and Salt Lake City Weekly has lost no time in snagging a Jim Beam ad. It appears on page 7; on page 25, in a full-page ad donated by the paper, the Church of Latter Day Saints is given space to argue that alcohol advertising is a threat to society. Publisher John Saltas tells the Salt Lake City Tribune the timing was a coincidence.
Lee Newquist, the owner of AAN's newest independent newsweekly, says there’s plenty of room to grow Fort Worth Weekly. The special relationship between the paper he bought this week and the Dallas Observer may allow cooperative ad sales efforts, and neither paper’s going to park its boxes on the other paper’s turf, Newquist says.
Mediapassage, an electronic ad placement firm for newspapers, closed its doors effective Monday, September 24. In the alternative newsweekly world, both Ruxton and AWN did business with Mediapassage. The Seattle-based company says it cannot honor commitments past September 21.
Jeff Cole has joined Village Voice Media as national account executive. Cole has both trade and alternative publishing experience and will focus on national sales for all the seven papers in the company.
When the Nashville Scene ran a five-part series skewering the Tennessean, the local daily countered with a string of full-page, color ads belittling the circulation figures of its alt-weekly competitor. Tennessean Publisher Craig Moon tells AJR that the Scene's take-out had nothing to do with his decision to run the ads. The Scene published its own ads in response and Editor/ Publisher Bruce Dobie warns darkly: "Never pick on someone smaller than you."
The category is off more than 50 percent this year, says AWN's Mark Hanzlik, who expects cig ads to remain in the ashcan for the foreseeable future. We already knew it, but now everyone else does too, since Frank Lewis reported it in the Philadelphia City Paper.
