Chicago Reader interim editor Geoff Dougherty has "abruptly parted" ways with the paper. Dougherty had been filling in for previous editor Kiki Yablon, who in November unexpectedly announced her resignation just four months into the position.
Stephens Press, the book publishing division of CityLife's parent company Stephens Media, is launching the CityLife Books imprint, which will publish up to four titles each year. The imprint will be edited by CityLife publisher Geoff Schumacher, who says he will be looking for proposals and manuscripts that speak to regular readers of the alt-weekly. "We want to publish books that question the conventional wisdom and offer new ways of looking at this region and its people," he says in a release. "Great writing will be paramount."
Last week, "at the tail end of one of the few weeks in the past year in which we did not publish anything snarky about anybody, someone threw two gallons of paint on our front doors," Artvoice editor Geoff Kelly writes. "Seems a waste; we hadn't even earned it. Nonetheless, we were cleaning up all morning."
Geoff Schumacher, a former editor of CityLife and parent company Stephens Media LLC's director of community publications, has been named CityLife's new publisher, effective May 21. The paper is applying for AAN membership this year.
Geoff Kelly has returned to his former job as editor of Artvoice, according to representatives of the Buffalo, NY-based alt-weekly. Kelly recently returned from the Middle East after serving for two years as senior media officer for the Qatar Foundation. Before that he served briefly as the editor of the now defunct Pulp, an arts and entertainment paper in Pittsburgh. Artvoice also announced that Lauren Newkirk Maynard has left her position as managing editor and associate music editor Mark Norris has been promoted to replace her.