Jacksonville TV host Casey Black — who is married to a GOP House candidate — was not pleased with a Folio Weekly illustrated cover that depicted Republicans as rats.
In this week's Village Voice, the recently laid off Nat Hentoff bids farewell with a column that touches on his time at the paper and his journalistic influences. "I came here in 1958 because I wanted a place where I could writer freely on anything I cared about," he writes. "There was no pay at first, but the Voice turned out to be a hell of a resounding forum." On the other coast, LA Weekly veteran Marc Cooper, who was let go a few months ago, has posted what he's calling an "autopsy" of the Weekly on his website. Cooper, who first joined the paper in 1982, pulls no punches in his nearly-6,000-word piece, but the gist can be found in one of the closing paragraphs. "If there was ever a time for an aggressive, irreverent, credible metro weekly to take on the [Los Angeles Times], it's right now, right here," he writes. "That requires investment, not layoffs."
Cooper Levey-Baker took over as editor last month, after a stint as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Sarasota County. Levey-Baker started at CL as an intern in 2004, and then worked as events editor, music writer, and arts writer until he left to work for Obama this year. "I'm really looking forward to engage more with local politics here in the area," he tells AAN News, "and to improve both our paper and the website so that we become the hub for the cool side of Sarasota."
While more than 70 papers are asking their readers to pledge to spend $100 of their holiday shopping locally this year, in Philadelphia, one alt-weekly has taken it a step further. The City Paper is hosting a Trunk Show on the most overhyped of mall shopping days, the day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday. The show will feature clothing, jewelry, bags, stationery, housewares and more from local designers, craftspeople and boutiques. AAN News recently caught up with City Paper associate publisher Roxanne Cooper via email to find out more about the initiative.
LA Observed is reporting that the Weekly has laid off longtime editor and columnist Marc Cooper, managing editor Sharan Street, copy chief David Caplan, staff writer Matthew Fleischer, senior designer Laura Steele and assistant to the editor Pandora Young.
The Chattanooga, Tenn., alt-weekly has been purchased by Brewer Media Group, which owns a handful of local radio stations and websites. "Brewer Media Group is a fantastic match for The Pulse," publisher Zack Cooper says. "We are confident that together we will continue to serve up the kind of content our readers expect. At the same time, Brewer's multi-media approach offers a powerful and compelling proposition for advertisers." Cooper, who was co-owner of the paper with editor Michael Kull, will remain publisher under Brewer.
Rick Mundy has joined the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies as director of sales and marketing. He has a more than a decade of experience in newspapers, in sales, marketing, and publishing at various community newspapers, and also as federation manager at the Newspaper Association of America. Mundy's immediate focus will be on revitalizing the AAN CAN classified program. His first day on staff was March 4.
In November, the Sacramento News & Review launched its Face to Face Video Ad project. The ads, which have also been rolled out at the company's paper in Chico and will soon hit its Reno paper, are serious, in-depth recorded interviews with vendors about their products and services. News & Review president and CEO Jeff von Kaenel says the idea was inspired by a vacation to India with his teenage daughter, who was shooting and editing video of the trip. "The video technology had gotten so easy to use," he says, it got him thinking about how the paper could take advantage of the technological leaps. So far, the initial reaction to the project has been promising, according to Susan Cooper, sales development manager at the Sacramento paper. In this Q&A with AAN News, she talks in more detail about the project.
Some adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement hit the streets in front of the paper's Hollywood office on Friday, handing out flyers, waving upside-down American flags and denouncing longtime columnist Marc Cooper. The activists took umbrage with this turn of phrase included in a recent Cooper column on Cynthia McKinney: "She was one of the first high-profile adherents of the official whack-job '9/11 Truth' movement, directly implicating the U.S. government in the staging of the attack on the Twin Towers." The Weekly has a slideshow of the protests.
AAN director of sales and marketing Roxanne Cooper and her assistant, Tiffany Kildale, resigned last week after accepting new positions with different employers. Cooper will be leaving AAN in February to take over as associate publisher of the Philadelphia City Paper, and Kildale departs next month to assume the position of meeting coordinator at the Chemical Producers & Distributors Association in Washington, D.C.
