San Antonio Current publisher Chris Sexson has accepted the position of publisher at Detroit's Metro Times. Both papers are owned by Times-Shamrock Communications. Sexson, who has been with the Current for five years, will take over at Metro Times in mid-June.
Michael Bowen (The Pacific Northwest Inlander), Skylar Browning (Missoula Independent), Brendan Kiley (The Stranger), and Ashley Lindstrom (San Antonio Current) have been named fellows in the fourth National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater at USC's Annenberg School. The fellows will participate in a rigorous 10-day program in February with guest faculty including L.A. Weekly theater editor Steven Leigh Morris.
Steven G. Kellman, a contributor to the Texas Observer and San Antonio Current and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, was named the winner yesterday of the National Book Critics Circle's (NBCC) 2006 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, which is awarded to "the most accomplished reviewer," from within the NBCC membership. "Texas is lucky to have Steve Kellman," writes Celia McGee on the NBCC's blog. "His range is open to the most extreme elements, in the writers he considers, but also in himself. That takes guts, and keeps reviewing fresh."
Mediaspan, which calls itself "the leading provider of digital content management and national advertising solutions for over 4,000 local media properties," yesterday announced the addition of several new clients, including AAN members Philadelphia City Paper, Austin Chronicle, San Antonio Current, Salt Lake City Weekly, Arkansas Times and Jackson Free Press. "Our drive to deliver new, national revenue for our affiliate partners goes hand-in-hand with our goal of meeting the demands of national advertisers who want to reach a specific local audience, in markets large and small, across multiple types of media," says a Mediaspan executive. "Whether advertisers seek online display ads on newspaper websites, pre-roll video on TV websites or online radio audio streams, we can deliver."
"I steered the paper in a populist direction, and viewed our job as to say what others could not, or would not," Sorg (pictured) writes in this week's issue. Sorg, who arrived in San Antonio five years ago and was named editor two years later, says she derived great joy working with the small editorial staff "to transform the Current into a credible, relevant, and indispensable publication -- one that offers the urgency of a newspaper and the context of a magazine." Satisfied that she accomplished what she set out to do, Sorg will continue to contribute to the paper as a freelance writer.
The Current kicks off its 20th anniversary year with a Jan. 18 retrospective of the paper's two decades, from breaking news about then-Mayor Henry Cisneros' adulterous affair, to the phallic cartoon that prompted businesses to ban the paper, to award-winning stories about media ownership. Journalist Steven G. Kellman writes of the newspaper culture in San Antonio: "Though the entire editorial staff of the Current is outnumbered by just the sports department at the Express-News, they keep the Hearst daily on its toes often by stepping on the toes of the powerful." The Current will auction framed digital prints of its most notable covers at four anniversary events over the course of the year.
