The cover of this week's paper -- with the provocative headline, "You put me out in Denver 'cause I wouldn't suck your dick" -- has some district residents upset, the Washington Post reports. City Paper says the city's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has received several calls complaining about the cover, which features a photo of councilman and former mayor Marion Barry with his arm around an ex-girlfriend who has accused him of stalking her. (The quote was taken from a recording of a confrontation between Barry and the ex-girlfriend.) "Some people are going to find that vulgar -- that's inevitable," editor Erik Wemple says. "If they find it vulgar, they can complain. It's worth putting it out there, and it's the truth. Sometimes the truth is vulgar." Publisher Amy Austin tells the Post that the negative reaction has been "much less than I expected," and that only three distribution spots have called to say they wouldn't display the paper while one has called to ask for more copies.
Faithful AAN.org readers may recall that on April Fool's Day, City Paper reworked its website to ape HuffPo's look. The parody -- The Huffington City Paper -- even received kudos from HuffPo itself. Now -- a day after the publication of a well-read City Paper column criticizing HuffPo -- the aggregator is asking the alt-weekly to remove the lightly trafficked page from its archives, in part because it contains a link to HuffPo. "Never thought I'd be scolded by a Huffington Post official for linking," writes editor Erik Wemple. "But I was!"
The Weekly celebrates an historic milestone with a special 20th anniversary issue that hit the streets (and the web) yesterday. The 200-page issue, which is saddle stitched and features the Weekly's first-ever glossy cover, "takes a long backwards glance at the people, the institutions, the buildings, the parties and the natural disasters that have helped shape the community" since Coast Weekly (the paper's original name) debuted in the fall of 1988. "The community support has been fantastic for this issue, in much the same way it has been for the last twenty years," says founder and CEO Bradley Zeve.
In a conversation with D.C.-area public radio host Kojo Nnamdi about "the changing face of City Paper," Erik Wemple says that "perhaps a little too much has been made of" his previous comments on the fate of long-form narrative pieces in the paper. Those stories are "an incredible abyss of work," he says. "We could not really sustain that sort of investment, while at the same time feeding the website." However, he adds, "it's not as if we will stop doing long narrative altogether," it will just be less often. He also notes that long-form narratives often don't generate much web traffic, and that Creative Loafing has made the web a priority. "If we don't come up with models that push web traffic, we are dead, and I am out of a job," Wemple says.
When Creative Loafing filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, the news was widely reported. AAN News scoured the wires, separated the wheat from the chaff, and collected some of the pertinent information and opinion.
The company, which owns Creative Loafing papers in Atlanta, Charlotte, Sarasota and Tampa, as well as the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning, the St. Petersburg Times reports. City Paper editor Erik Wemple reports that CEO Ben Eason discussed the filing with top company officials in a conference call this morning, and said that the bankruptcy filing would allow CL's six papers to establish a greater online presence while the company reorganizes its operations. A corporate memo on the filing says it "has little to do with the acquisition" of the Reader and City Paper last year. Eason also said that the move entails no liquidation or layoffs. In fact, the Chapter 11 filing will roll back editorial staff cuts at the papers, Wemple writes. MORE: Read more about the move from Creative Loafing (Tampa), the Reader, Crain's and Bloomberg News.
The Georgetown Voice's nearly 3,000-word story on the alt-weekly looks at how it is evolving under the ownership of Creative Loafing, and how the paper is fighting to maintain its identity -- and market share -- despite having fewer resources. "You want to create a rich environment and then bring it down into the print," says CL CEO Ben Eason, who is currently focused on uniting the company's six papers as a national web presence. "Without a doubt, the web is a far richer environment than print." Editor Erik Wemple says he sees the paper a year from now as being "very, very, very much a web machine." But publisher Amy Austin adds that, while online advertising revenue is quickly growing for City Paper, it still only makes up approximately 5 percent of the paper's total revenue, which has been in decline. By 2006, the paper's net revenue -- traditionally around 15 percent -- had fallen to 4.7 percent.
DCist reports that City Paper's parent company Creative Loafing needs to cut the paper's budget by $170,000. The belt-tightening could lead to additional layoffs at the alt-weekly (some production and editorial staffers were laid off after CL purchased City Paper and the Chicago Reader last year). "Like a lot of media companies, we are going through an exceptionally rough period, and indeed we are discussing how to cut expenses," editor Erik Wemple tells DCist. "I don't want to cite any figures at this point because we are trying our best as a company to minimize the impact. But yes, layoffs are part of the discussion."
The Washington City Paper operated a dunking booth at the Adams Morgan Festival in D.C. on Sunday. Fishbowl DC reports that Editor Erik Wemple and columnist James Jones both volunteered to get wet, and there are photos of the latter.
Erik Wemple's coworkers at Washington City Paper had been "excited about the opportunity" for him to become editor of the Village Voice, he tells Mediabistro's FishbowlDC a week after changing his mind about taking the position. That doesn't mean they were anxious for him to leave: "Proof of Wemple's worth to the City Paper can be found in the fact that you'll be hard pressed -- and trust us, we've tried -- to find a CityPaper employee who's not pleased to have Wemple back in the saddle," FishbowlDC Editor Patrick W. Gavin writes. Wemple does acknowledge that "there are clearly legitimate questions about whether my head is in the game at this stage" -- questions that he intends to answer by doing solid work.
