The Weekly took home "an armload of awards" from the Idaho Press Club's Best of 2008 competition, including five first-place awards, for arts/entertainment reporting, business reporting, health/medical reporting, political reporting and watchdog/investigative reporting. Weekly staff writer Tara Morgan was also named Rookie of the Year for her work in 2008. Meanwhile, the Hispanic Cultural Center of Idaho awarded the alt-weekly an Animo award in the Outstanding Newspaper category for non-biased coverage of not only the Latino community, but of all minority communities in the area.
- The Mountain Xpress is ending its 14-year run as a print publication today, "suspending its regular online news reports and converting its entire news operation to Twitter dispatches from staff and trusted community journalists."
- The San Francisco Bay Guardian has settled its lawsuit with Village Voice Media, agreeing to drop its legal action and "shut the fuck up" about PG&E, sunshine, media concentration, rent control, and over-development.
- Publisher Sally Freeman has sold the Boise Weekly to N-Corp-Al, which quickly shut the alt-weekly down and relaunched it as the Treasure Valley Weekly Post.
- The Washington City Paper has relaunched as the Huffington City Paper.
- Salt Lake City Weekly announced it has purchased SLUG magazine and will bring new features like "Cute Baby of the Month" and "Those Wacky Pets" to the long-running local underground-music magazine.
- Athens, Ga., alt-weekly Flagpole has relaunched as "a celebrity 'zine about fun and style, now to be known as Starpole."
- The East Bay Express is changing editorial course, introducing new procedures like "user-generated copyediting" and "reader-assigned stories."
The Idaho alt-weekly is one of "a growing number of news outlets" signing up to partner with the online world news site GlobalPost, the New York Times reports. The Weekly subscribed to the service last week and is running a widget that feeds global news on the sidebar of its citydesk blog.
Rachael Daigle is one of 50 women named an Idaho Woman of the Year by the Idaho Business Review. The women will be featured in a glossy magazine and honored at an awards dinner in late March.
Louisiana's Independent Weekly reports that in 2008 it had to lay off one employee and that it recently instituted "a single digit, company-wide salary cut." The Nashville Scene says it is eliminating its books section, as well as News of the Weird and the New York Times crossword. Boise Weekly's publisher says that even though the "last quarter of 2008 was very disappointing ... it might have been the best we will see for awhile." Meanwhile, the Chicago Reader says goodbye to two of its departing editorial staffers, and Nat Hentoff talks to the New York Times about his plans post-Voice.
At the paper's regular Friday meeting, Sally Freeman asked the staff to take a 10 percent cut in pay through the end of March to help ward off damage done by weak ad sales. "After the quick announcement, Freeman cried a little and then offered to meet with each of her workers individually," Weekly editor Nathaniel Hoffman reports. Freeman tells Hoffman that the paper's annual revenue is down 4 percent compared to 2007, and it came in $90,000 below budget in the last six to seven weeks.
On the seventh anniversary of the event, the Weekly once again auctioned off a year's worth of cover art to fund a worthy cause. Last week's haul brings the total to date raised by the event to more than $78,000. The beneficiary of this year's auction has yet to be determined, but in the past the paper has funded causes like childrens' arts organizations and a work of public art.
Looks like the Chicago Reader isn't alone in running a post-election cover that ruffled some feathers. The Boise Weekly's cover illustration by Alejandro Lempkin, which includes the phrase "Barack Oboner," apparently upset a few readers. "I don't think many of those who I heard from understood that 'Barack Oboner' was not meant to demean the president-elect so much as it was meant to poke fun at people just like me," writes editor Rachael Daigle. "That is, people who live in a certain area of town -- the same area in which I live -- where Barack Obama was heavily supported, a part of town that -- crudely speaking -- had a boner for Barack." MORE: Chicago's CBS affiliate reports on the Reader dustup.
Longtime ad director Nancy E. Spittle is leaving the Weekly after seven years "to pursue new professional adventures," according to a press release. Her position will not be filled -- instead, the Weekly has hired two additional account executives. "Even though Boise Weekly still has positive revenue growth over last year, the economy requires all companies to tighten ship and work hard to increase revenue and improve performance in sales," the press release notes.
