The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel announced Monday it will start an entertainment- and lifestyle-oriented publication and companion Web site in the fall. The target age group is 25- to 34-year-olds. The still unnamed tabloid "will not be a news publication," Rick Romell reports in the Journal Sentinel. Shepherd Express, an AAN member, is also published in Milwaukee, Wis.
Dirt is the name of the free weekday newspaper Boulder Publishing Co. will debut Aug. 20. The paper, which is geared toward the 18- to 24-year-old market, will be distributed in and around the University of Colorado campus, reports the Daily Camera, which is also owned by Boulder Publishing. The new paper will compete in the same market as AAN member Boulder Weekly.
The owner of the Atlanta Journal- Constitution no longer has a 25 percent stake in the chain of alternative weeklies. Tensions between Creative Loafing, Inc., and Cox executives erupted last year when the Journal-Constitution launched its own entertainment weekly, AccessAtlanta in the same market as Creative Loafing Atlanta, Caroline Wilbert reports in the the Journal-Constitution. Cox executive Charles "Buddy" Solomon told the Atlanta daily he agreed to the sale "to put all of this behind us."
Ben Eason, CEO of Creative Loafing Inc., confirmed last week that his company's board has agreed to buy out Cox's minority stake in the alt-weekly chain, Steve Fennessy reports in Creative Loafing Atlanta. In addition to the Atlanta paper, the alt-weekly chain publishes newspapers in Charlotte, Tampa and Sarasota. Cox bought a 25 percent stake in Creative Loafing in 2000, but friction resulted when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a Cox-owned daily, launched its own free entertainment weekly last year. Eason says that if all goes well, the deal could be completed by mid-July.
The FAS-FAX report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, released this afternoon, brought good news for the majority of the dozen biggest newspapers, but many other top 50 papers lost readers on weekdays for the six-month period ending March 31, compared with the same period last year.
A free daily newspaper launched last fall, A.M. Journal Express, lost financial support from investors, the Associated Press reports. The Journal Express, published by American Consolidated Media, competed with Quick, a free daily still being published by The Dallas Morning News.
Insider, a youth weekly that promises to bring readers "Rochester Remixed," debuted Friday. Editorial content includes weird news, breezily written mainstream news, snapshots of young people having fun, and two articles identified as "big stories." The free tabloid targets ages 25 to 34, according to the Gannett daily paper that publishes it. That age group is "wildly underserved," says Democrat and Chronicle Editor Mike Johansson. AAN member City Newspaper is published in Rochester.
Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. tells a journalism school audience his company has no intention of publishing any youth or commuter papers like the Chicago Tribune's Red Eye. Sulzberger considers such papers "condescending" and degrading to the readership, Mark Fitzgerald reports in Editor & Publisher. Sulzberger says the Times doesn't want to "become less than we are to reach an audience whose needs we wouldn't do a good job of meeting."
The deal reminds Nashville Scene writer Matt Pulle of the arrangement Village Voice Media and New Times Media made in October 2002 to each close a paper that competed in a market dominated by the other. That plan threw the Justice Department into a snit. In a surprise move Monday, Gannett traded its only sizable Georgia paper, The Times in Gainesville, to Morris Multimedia in exchange for two small papers in Tennessee. Gannett also acquired two weeklies in Tennessee's Rutherford County. "While the swap of several small newspapers is hardly Comcast buying Disney, it marks the crowning achievement in Gannett's stranglehold of the Middle Tennessee area," Pulle writes.
The new entertainment-focused papers popping up in cities across the U.S. are "a melange of Entertainment Weekly and Reader's Digest," delivering simple content and big photos, says The Christian Science Monitor. But don't expect them to carry Savage Love. AAN Executive Director Richard Karpel says content shaped by focus groups "doesn't create a very compelling product." Readership Institute Director John Lavine argues that the hundreds of thousands of readers who pick up the tabloids prove there's a market.
