Built on the Metro Publisher platform, the new ffwdweekly.com is a streamlined site with powerful venue and events listings that allow you to search by map or by list, isolate neighbourhoods (yes, that's how we spell it up here) and look for the right mix of food and entertainment.
Calgary's Fast Forward Weekly had a strong showing at the recent Alberta Weekly Newspaper Association awards.
The Canadian Community Newspaper Association recognized Fast Forward Weekly with a Blue Ribbon for general excellence, as well as first place nods for best historical story and best multimedia feature in its annual competition.
Fast Forward Weekly publisher and founding editor Ian Chiclo has left the publishing industry to become director of digital marketing for Tourism Calgary.
Jasmine Valentina, 23, was hit by a bus over the weekend.
The Vancouver Humane Society is trying to take its campaign against calf roping to Canada's biggest rodeo, the Calgary Stampede, but the group has had a hard time placing their anti-roping ad. It was rejected by the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun, but the ad -- which is not particularly shocking -- will run in Fast Forward Weekly. The Sun's publisher tells the CBC the ad is in "bad taste" and that the Vancouver Humane Society is "out of its jurisdiction." Fast Forward publisher Ian Chiclo disagrees. "As long as there are no legal issues, we're not in the business of muzzling advertisers," he tells AAN News. "The Calgary Stampede is a great event for the city, but groups should be allowed to express their opinion about the event."
The CBC reports that an afternoon thunderstorm yesterday "brought almost 500 lightning strikes to Calgary," and Fast Forward Weekly publisher Ian Chiclo says one of them hit his paper's office. "Publisher's computer fried, bits of wall land beside his chair," Chiclo wrote in an email to AAN News yesterday. Reached this morning, he tells us that the office is functioning again, but "limping," with only three computers having access to the internet and the paper's servers. "We think some of the wires are fried," he says.
After Fast Forward Weekly ran a story last week about vendors who are frustrated with how the Calgary Farmers' Market is run, about 200 copies of the paper distributed at the market disappeared. Several people who work at the market tell Fast Forward the papers were taken into an upstairs office. "By partaking in that kind of activity and pulling a paper off a shelf, it's just kind of shining more light on the issue that was talked about in the article in the first place," one vendor says. "It's pretty embarrassing, and not exactly what a farmers' market should be about." Market officials say they don't "have a clue" about the missing papers.
On May 21, the Canadian Community Newspaper Association Better Newspapers Competition honored a team from Fast Forward with a best series award for "The Future of the Oilsands." This is the second consecutive year the paper has received the award.
Fast Forward Weekly, the alt-weekly in Calgary, Canada, published a story Sept. 25 that quoted a Calgary Member of Parliament making comments linking immigrants to crime in the middle of an election campaign. Lee Richardson made the comments in a telephone interview with the paper, and as soon as the story was published, it was picked up in the local and national media. The following day, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper dismissed the story as a ridiculous example of "gotcha journalism" -- even though the paper had phoned Richardson after the initial interview to ask him to clarify his remarks. (Richardson's retraction was included in the Fast Forward story.) The story even warrented a mention on Comedy Central's election blog.
