When he covered media for the Dallas Observer, Eric Celeste wanted to do more than deliver "bee stings" to the local daily. He wanted to delve into the paper's inner workings. His award-winning article, "At the Ripping Point," examined a newspaper consulting company's role in the decline of The Dallas Morning News. This is the 21st in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Eric Benjamin, a 20-year alternative newsweekly veteran, becomes associate publisher of Gambit Weekly. The Boston native played a significant role in the growth of the alternative newsweekly industry as board president and founding board member of Alternative Weekly Network, which represents more than 120 alternative newsweeklies nationwide. He comes to Gambit directly from New Mass Media, where he was national sales director.
Eric Broder, managing editor at the Cleveland Free Times, which turns 10 this week, remembers a time when the paper could hardly fill ad space. "The issue is 24 pages, consisting mainly of editorial. You don't want that. You want ads in there, and plenty of 'em. But this was the first issue. It's tough enough to sell ad space for a publication, and tougher yet for one that doesn't exist." Broder reflects on the last decade of a paper that was one business deal away from never happening.
Lisa Chamberlain has been let go as editor-in-chief of the Cleveland Free Times and has gone to work for an Ohio congressman. Publisher Matt Fabyan says the decision was his. The Free Times is conducting a national search for a replacement. In the meantime, Don Forst, editor-in-chief, of The Village Voice will be spending three days a week in Cleveland to help put out the paper.
The Cleveland Free Times' pick of Rep. Gary Condit, R-Calif., as Man of the Year wins praise from Al Kamen of The Washington Post. Kamen says Free Times "got it right" because the selection "should be given to someone who kept the country enthralled for much of the year." Even after Sept. 11 should have wiped Condit off the radar, Condit "was determined not to cede the front page to Osama." Lisa Chamberlain, editor of the Free Times, says in an editorial about the choice, "Gary Condit is the quintessence of a gluttonous society operating without fear or consequence, content to distract itself with inanities."
Lisa Chamberlain, editor of Cleveland Free Times, tells JournalismJobs.com that alt weeklies thrive because mainstream media is "so neutered, so buttoned down and so devoid of any personality that people simply cannot relate to it." She says alternative papers have "grown up without losing our edge" and calls alternative journalism "one of the last places left to do really in-depth, hard-hitting work."
Eric Celeste muses in the Dallas Observer on the departure of Lee Newquist from New Times and the future of Fort Worth Weekly in the post-John Forsyth era.
