200 copies of Artvoice mysteriously disappeared from a government building last week, the same week the paper ran a cover story on Erie County Executive Chris Collins.
Last week, "at the tail end of one of the few weeks in the past year in which we did not publish anything snarky about anybody, someone threw two gallons of paint on our front doors," Artvoice editor Geoff Kelly writes. "Seems a waste; we hadn't even earned it. Nonetheless, we were cleaning up all morning."
The Buffalo alt-weekly had for months been trying to obtain meeting minutes and budget documents from a board charged with negotiating a merger between two area hospital operators. But the board claimed to be exempt from New York State's laws regarding open meetings and freedom of information and wouldn't turn over documents, so associate editor Buck Quigley joined a lawsuit to force the board to release them. On Friday, Judge Patrick NeMoyer ruled in favor of Quigley and the other plaintiffs on every count. Artvoice editor Geoff Kelly writes that, in addition to shining light on the board's activities, the ruling is "also a precedent: The next time a public/private authority claims to be exempt from New York State laws regarding openness, we have a court case to wave under their noses."
The Buffalo, N.Y., weekly is in the midst of a four-year rehab of an 103-year-old building which has had enough "twists and turns to fill an opera," publisher Jamie Moses tells the Buffalo News. Moses bought the E.B. Green-designed building from the city for $10,000, and he's put close to $1 million into improvements. "It's a messy conversion," says Moses, who originally budgeted around $350,000 for the renovations. "We ran into things we didn't expect, and we're adding work, so it's not the same project we planned." Artvoice should (finally) be in its new home by the end of the year.
Geoff Kelly has returned to his former job as editor of Artvoice, according to representatives of the Buffalo, NY-based alt-weekly. Kelly recently returned from the Middle East after serving for two years as senior media officer for the Qatar Foundation. Before that he served briefly as the editor of the now defunct Pulp, an arts and entertainment paper in Pittsburgh. Artvoice also announced that Lauren Newkirk Maynard has left her position as managing editor and associate music editor Mark Norris has been promoted to replace her.
