In an attempt to link Democratic challenger Rick Noriega to the infamous Howard Dean "scream" of '04, a new campaign ad from incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) "jacked" footage from an Austin Chronicle video showing Noriega excitedly giving his version of CNN's election-night broadcast. The Chronicle's Wells Dunbar says the paper is "considering all our options" in response to what he calls "the unsanctioned, unapproved, and unstatesmanlike" use of its video. But two of Cornyn's spokesmen tell the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle's Austin bureau blogger that they consider their use of the alt-weekly's video covered by the "fair use" exception in copyright law, and note their ad credited the paper as a source. "I don't think the Chronicle would be raising a peep of objection if their video didn't make Noriega look incredibly out of control," the campaign says.
The Georgetown Voice's nearly 3,000-word story on the alt-weekly looks at how it is evolving under the ownership of Creative Loafing, and how the paper is fighting to maintain its identity -- and market share -- despite having fewer resources. "You want to create a rich environment and then bring it down into the print," says CL CEO Ben Eason, who is currently focused on uniting the company's six papers as a national web presence. "Without a doubt, the web is a far richer environment than print." Editor Erik Wemple says he sees the paper a year from now as being "very, very, very much a web machine." But publisher Amy Austin adds that, while online advertising revenue is quickly growing for City Paper, it still only makes up approximately 5 percent of the paper's total revenue, which has been in decline. By 2006, the paper's net revenue -- traditionally around 15 percent -- had fallen to 4.7 percent.
The Austin Chronicle's advertising director -- and AAN Retail Advertising Committee chair -- says she's leaving the paper in the first week of July. Flagg plans to move back home to Phoenix to start a new company that provides consulting services. She will step down from her position on the AAN Board of Directors following the board's meeting in June in Philadelphia. Her departure means someone will be elected at the convention to serve the one year remaining in her term as retail ad chair.
That seems to be the opinion of Ed Avis, who looks at the challenges alt-weekly owners are facing in a piece for Quill, a magazine published by the Society for Professional Journalists. Not surprisingly, he says the biggest challenge to the business is the internet. He talks to the Austin Chronicle's Louis Black, Creative Loafing's Ben Eason, and Times Shamrock's Don Farley to see where they are at in relation to the internet, and, more importantly, where they're trying to go. Ultimately, Avis thinks that the challenge of the online market -- in concert with the aging of the original alt-weekly founders -- is what's behind the industry's increased consolidation. Northwestern University professor and Academy for Alternative Journalism director Charles Whitaker agrees. "I think the (older owners) have had difficulty adjusting and figuring out the new media landscape, particularly the internet and things like Craigslist," he says. "At the same time, a group of new owners said, 'We can do this as a chain. We still have our alternative press sensibilities, but by pooling our resources we can run these papers more efficiently than they had been run in the past.'"
Austin Chronicle promotions manager Sadie Caplan (pictured) talks to AAN News about the Chrontourage program, which pairs traditional street-team marketing tactics with an added incentive for potential advertisers. "Its kind of a win-win situation," Caplan says. "The advertisers feel like we add something special to their event, and [attendees] see that the Chronicle is there and think it must be a cool event to be at."
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."
Doug Harvey doesn't just sit around thinking about art; he also creates it. The alt-weekly critic will exhibit his paintings and sculptures in "Great Expectorations" this month and next at a gallery in L.A.’s Chinatown district. The gallery describes the exhibit as "a multi-faceted serial piece ... simultaneously disturbing and therapeutic." It's the artist-writer’s first solo show in almost a decade. ANOTHER ALT-WEEKLY WRITER-ARTIST: Austin Chronicle arts editor Robert Faires stars in "In on It," which returns this month after being "the Austin theater hit of the summer," says the Austin American-Statesman.
University of Texas graduate student Linden Dalecki has spun his first-place prize in the Austin Chronicle's 2004 short story contest into a full-blown novel. Dalecki thickened the plot of the story, "The B-Boys of Beaumont," a young-adult yarn about breakdancing in the Texas outback, into a book deal with publisher Houghton Mifflin. In an interview with The Austin American-Statesman, Dalecki describes the novel, Kid B, as "sort of Rumble Fish meets The Outsider, set in the world of hip-hop."
The first issue was a "disaster," says the Chronicle's co-founder, "a calamity so legendary that, for much of a decade, copies of it were not allowed in the office." The cover featured Shock Treatment, a movie destined never to open, and it was completely purple as the result of a miscommunication with the printer. The present-day Chronicle is "a paper as honest as we can get it," Black says. "We don't just create this paper, we're fans. We can't wait to see what's going to be in the next issue and the next and the next." In addition to Black's column in the Sept. 8 issue, the Chronicle posted a 25th anniversary photo album online.
