Earlier this month, the alt-weekly launched a daily e-blast that will feature one full story along with listings and other timely content, like profiles of musicians or authors who have appearances that day. The Daily, which has the catchy slogan "Today's News...Today," will be published each day at 1 pm. "It's been twenty years since Jackson had an afternoon daily," publisher Todd Stauffer tells the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership (pdf). "We thought it would be interesting to revive that tradition, but starting from the ground up using 21st Century technology."
Columbia Free Times won nine 2008 South Carolina Press Association awards, and Charleston City Paper won five. City Paper placed first in four categories (Feature Writing, General News Photo, Lifestyle Feature Writing and Photo Series or Photo Story), while Free Times took home first-place wins in three categories (Critical Writing, Illustration and Reporting in Depth). The awards were officially announced at the association's winter meeting last weekend.
While daily papers and alt-weeklies across the country are being forced to cut staff and salaries in this tough economy, the Jackson Free Press is bucking the trend by adding a full-time editorial position. Ward Schaefer, a former public-school teacher, joined the paper this week as a reporter on the news beat. The paper says it is also increasing the daily news coverage on its website.
In the ninth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Jackson Free Press editor Donna Ladd discusses her award-winning feature on the Seale family, which has long ties to the Ku Klux Klan, but has tried to ameliorate its past. She talks to St. John Barned-Smith about how they found the story, how her upbringing in Mississippi informs her work, and how she connects with her sources. "I find the best way is to just have absolute interest in what they're saying," Ladd says. "I have no judgment when I'm sitting in front of someone. I am a sponge.
The JFP has "resurrected the alt-weekly tradition of maverick investigations and cultural provocation," Casey Sanchez writes in Next American City magazine. In doing so, "it has cultivated an audience uncommon in the South and practically nonexistent among alt-weeklies -- young, white conservatives and black professionals, many of whom are lifelong Jacksonians." Editor Donna Ladd says the paper's dogged coverage of City Hall has helped build a loyal following. "Any cover with the mayor on it doesn't stay on the stands more than a day," she says.
Publisher Matt Fabyan tells the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that his fears of newsroom tension between employees of former competitors Cleveland Free Times and Scene were unfounded. "After the first day, people have jelled really well," he says. The Plain-Dealer runs down some facts about the new paper, which debuted last week after the two papers were merged by new owners Times-Shamrock. The first issue came in at 100 pages, which was up from 72 in Free Times' last issue and 60 in Scene's last one. The new paper's circulation is 60,000, which is 10,000 more than pre-merger circulation totals for each paper, but down from a high of 100,000 a few years ago. Fabyan also tells the P-D that total staff loss was about 10 people. Each paper had about 25 staff members pre-merger, and the new paper comes in around 40, half from the old Free Times and half from the old Scene.
"A month ago we were enemies, hunkered down in bunkers and trying to will each other into starvation or surrender; today, we share the same fax machine and make small talk in the elevators," Frank Lewis says of the now-merged Cleveland Free Times and Scene. "And between deadlines and the seemingly endless details inherent in merging two operations -- packing and unpacking, integrating computer systems, finding the goddamn coffee -- there's just been no time to nurse grudges." He adds: "What matters most now is figuring out what to do with this rare opportunity -- in the Rust Belt, at least -- to leave behind the hand-to-mouth, week-to-week existence, the paranoia and bitterness, and figure out how to make the most of a more stable future."
After 16 years, Cleveland's oldest AAN member published its last issue today. Started by labor lawyer Richard Siegel in 1992, the alt-weekly survived even after its founder died a year later, always striving to remain faithful to his mission of providing "tough-minded, responsible and gutsy coverage of what's really going on in" Cleveland. Although Free Times survived a temporary shutdown in 2002-03, this time it appears to be closing for good. In its final issue, the paper publishes a series of tributes, remembrances, and critiques.
