"Perhaps figuring that pop-up ads have desensitized the public to intrusions on their reading space, more and more newspapers across the nation are opting to move advertising to the front page, above the fold, in the form of annoying post-it notes," Evan Brown writes in the Advocate. The Advocate's parent-paper the Hartford Courant is already running the ads, and, according to Advocate publisher Joshua Mamis, the alt-weekly is looking at ways to "creatively" use them.
When the Advocate staff learned that the New Haven Police Department was holding a bumper sticker contest to advertise its gun hotline, they kicked around dozens of ideas, riffing on common bumper stickers. Ultimately, the paper decided to submit two: "My child is an Honor Student ... who hasn't learned how to fire a gun," and "I'd rather NOT be shooting a gun." The latter beat out 24 other slogans in votes cast by around 200 cops, the Hartford Courant reports. Advocate staff writer Chris Arnott wrote the text and production manager Matthew Ford did the design, according to the New Haven Independent. "This is a genuine thing," Arnott said at a press conference unveiling the stickers. "Not a snarky Advocate thing."
The City Council of West Haven voted unanimously in favor of Councilwoman Gail Burns' proposal to limit how many news boxes can go on a block, and it was signed into law earlier this month. When space is an issue, "dailies get first dibs, then twice-weeklies, then weeklies and so on," according to the Advocate. The law seems to have been thought up, drafted and passed in haste, as Burns tells the Advocate no one did an inventory of the boxes, and no one bothered to notify any of publishers before the law was passed. "Anyone can attend a public hearing," Burns says. The law "flies in the face of the First Amendment," Advocate publisher Joshua Mamis says. "Plus, the prioritization is puzzling. Why would the town give preferential treatment to a publication owned by an out-of-state company that has over the years reduced its commitment to local news gathering?"
In the Jan. 26 issue of New Haven Advocate, three writers engage in a debate on alt-weeklies' connection to pornography. In "Porn Free," Carole Bass questions why alt-weeklies "reflexively pimp for porn." Ryan Kearney and Tom Gogola provide counterpoints in "Porn Goes Public" and "Slings and Eros."
In a profile in the Jewish Ledger, Paul Bass explains why he left the Advocate Weekly chain after 15 years: "I was fed up with corporate journalism. I really liked the people at the Advocate but the Advocate got bought out by one of the largest corporate chains in America ... Their whole commitment was not just to the bottom line, which was fine, but to an unrealistic profit margin that meant continuous pressure for budget cuts, which in turn meant abandoning any commitment to quality journalism. More importantly, the corporate atmosphere drained the creativity. I went crazy with all the forms of bureaucracy and group think." The Advocate Weekly chain was acquired by the Tribune Co. in 1999. Bass now runs the Web site newhavenindependent.com, while his wife, Carole, continues to serve as associate editor of the New Haven Advocate.
"Newspapers want the benefit of being read worldwide but not the responsibility that comes with it," an attorney told a federal appeals court June 3 in Stanley Young vs. The New Haven Advocate. The libel lawsuit by a Virginia prison warden is an appeal of a federal district court ruling in Virginia that granted jurisdiction because the Connecticut newspapers that he was suing published their material on the Web. AAN joined amicus briefs in support of the publishers in both Young and Gutnick vs. Barron's, a similar case before Australia's highest court. The case may be the first federal appellate ruling on whether a newspaper can be sued anywhere its Web site is read.
In a case against two Connecticut Tribune Co. papers, The Hartford Courant and AAN-member New Haven Advocate, knotty issues of jurisdiction and Web pages are at stake. Editor & Publisher examines the "long-arm statute" case involving coverage of housing Connecticut prisoners in Virginia jails and whether the two papers libeled a Virginia prison warden. AAN is one of more than two dozen newspapers and trade associations signing onto an amicus curiae brief in the case.
