Dallas Observer won two first place awards in the 2003 Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards, and The Village Voice and Phoenix New Times each took one. East Bay Express won second place in the General Excellence category for papers with circulations 50,001 to 100,000, and New Times papers were finalists in nine other categories.
Lael Morgan tells E&P's Lucia Moses that buyers have been calling since Casco Bay Weekly was shuttered two weeks ago. Morgan blames the economy and the Portland Phoenix for the weekly's closure. "We haven't had a national ad since they arrived," she tells E&P.
Casco Bay Weekly's co-founders, Monte Paulsen and Gary Santaniello, mourn the closure of the alternative newsweekly they opened in 1988. "It was glorious," Paulsen says of the early days in Portland, Maine, when the staff delivered the paper by themselves and the photographer worked in the staff bathroom. The paper closed Nov. 21, unable to stem financial losses and fight off competition from the Portland Phoenix.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian wins two first place awards in the National Newspaper Association's 2002 Better Newspaper Contest: Tali Woodward for Best Health Story, and Dan Zoll for Best Education/Literacy Story. Willy Stern of the Nashville Scene takes a first in Best Investigative or In-Depth Story or Series for his five-part dissection of The Tennessean.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote its first article about PG&E's monopoly on power in the Bay area in 1969, not long after the paper was founded. The San Francisco Chronicle looks back on this "lone, frequently bombastic crusade to make the city establish the municipal power utility Congress intended" and how the daily papers in San Francisco have opposed public power. The article quotes Stephen Buel, editor of the East Bay Express, as saying, "The sad fact is that a lot of the Bay Guardian's criticisms of PG&E are very apt, but the way in which the paper hammers home its message makes it get lost because it is so mind-numbingly repetitive."
Annalee Newitz, culture editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, joins nine other reporters from around the world in the 2003-03 class of Knight Science Journalism Fellows. Newitz is also author of the syndicated column, "Techsploitation," which she describes as "rants about high tech media and everyday life." She founded the online publication Bad Subjects in 1992. In 1997 she co-edited "White Trash: Race and Class in America," a small-press best seller.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian expects to move into its own $4.7 million building sometime this month – where they will "never have to worry about an eviction … never have to worry about a bad landlord," says Executive Editor Tim Redmond. A 1950s era law banning SBA loans to media companies was repealed in 1994. Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express took advantage of the program in 1995. Now the Bay Guardian has swung a deal for a 30,000-square-foot building with a rooftop view of the Bay Bridge thanks to an SBA loan guarantee package.
