Morris' upcoming retirement was announced Thursday morning via an e-mail from Brad Mindich (pictured) to employees of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group that was subsequently posted on senior writer Mark Jurkowitz's blog. Morris has worked for the company for 36 of its 40 years. "I find it a bit strange for me to be the one making this announcement," writes Mindich. "Barry has known me since I was a baby, known me well enough to have watched me taking baths in the sink of my family’s small West Roxbury apartment." Mindich is the son of Phoenix publisher and founder Stephen Mindich and has served as executive vice president for three years. Morris tells Jurkowitz that he's looking forward to new challenges, but adds, "It's very possible I can still play a role in the company."
The owner of alt-weeklies in Boston, Providence and Portland, Maine, will launch new sites for each paper on Jan. 1, according to the Boston Business Journal. Phoenix Media executive vice president Bradley Mindich says the $200,000 upgrade is a smart investment in light of the growth of Internet advertising. "In five years, it is highly probable that, as a converged media company, the Web could be the largest ad revenue generator for us," says Mindich. The Business Journal also reports that Phoenix competitor The Weekly Dig will launch a new site in March modeled after Boston.com but targeting the 18- to 34-year-old demographic.
Last August, the former executive editor of Flagpole Magazine, an AAN member paper in Athens, Ga., started a subscription-based newsletter. That fast-growing newsletter, the Athens Weekly News, just made its re-debut as a free weekly tabloid. Editor and publisher Brad Aaron announced the change in his op-ed column May 21. The Weekly News will continue to concentrate on local news but will also offer more in-depth news stories, a bigger opinion section, an expanded events calendar with music listings, arts coverage and a classified ads section.
Brad Nelson, the 33-year-old founder, editor and publisher of Duluth, Minnesota’s Ripsaw News, moonlights as the drummer for the blues-rocking Black-Eyed Snakes. Although he occasionally leaves the paper for weeks at a time to join the band on tour, Ripsaw has helped revitalize the city’s small indie scene and raised its political awareness.
Brad Aaron has resigned his position at Flagpole Magazine in Athens, Ga., due to "issues with some of our management practices and decisions," Editor and Publisher Pete McCommons writes in the April 23 edition (second item). Aaron's popular column, "City Dope," is "in abeyance," but "may reappear at some future time when government has run amuck and the bat signal beams to the sky," McCommons says.
The Missoula Independent has hired alt-weekly veteran Brad Tyer as its new editor. Tyer, a native of Houston, takes over from Interim Editor David Madison, who will become the paper’s Flathead Bureau Chief in Kalispell, Mont. Tyer was previously editor of the Texas Observer and before that a staff reporter at the Houston Press.
