Alternative weeklies and radio stations go together like love and marriage, say three companies that own both mediums. The synergy is easiest to exploit in cross-promotion, but it can also help on the news side. AAN News interviews several executives who have tried this combo and like it.
Cincinnati CityBeat has purchased a six-story downtown building and is now looking for "like-minded" tenants to share the space, the Cincinnati Business Courier reports. CityBeat will pay $790,000 for the building where Hank Williams once recorded. "We just thought it would be better to buy. It was a good deal. It's a really good building, and we wanted to stay downtown," Co-Publisher and Editor John Fox tells the business paper.
Alternative newsweeklies are feeling the one-two punch of war and recession. National advertising is down across the board, but classifieds are providing a cushion. While several papers have had to lay off employees, others are taking the opportunity to add sales staff.
In an internal memo posted on Jim Romenesko's Media News Web site, Metro Newspapers asks its staff members for feedback on a proposed 5% pay cut, which it says is necessary to reduce the need for layoffs. According to the memo, company officers have already taken a 20% reduction in compensation, and top managers voted to cut their own pay by 10%.
Since its mid-June release, “The Stranger Guide to Seattle: The City’s Smartest, Pickiest, Most Obsessive Urban Manual” has been flying off bookstore shelves and out of dot.com mail-order warehouses -- and not just in Seattle.
Philadelphia City Paper's Howard Altman lets The Inquirer's Tony Ridder have it right between the eyes. the daily is laying off editorial staff due to financial woes. Altman gives Ridder some advice on surviving a downturn –– ditch the focus groups, concentrate on the city not the 'burbs, bring the reporters back when times improve and don't abandon foreign reporting.
