NT Media of Phoenix, Ariz., has licensed iPIX AdPlus Prism software, a publishing tool offered by Publishing Business Systems. AdPlus allows advertisers to upload and edit their own photos and graphics, as well as proof their own layout for publication. NT says that the new online ad system will improve work flow and cut costs at its 11 papers by reducing support and maintenance needs in their advertising departments.
"Throughout the day I'd witnessed police provoke protesters," writes Celeste Fraser Delgado, who was reporting on the protests surrounding last week's free-trade meetings. "I'd seen young people cuffed and lined up along the street, but I thought they must have done something bad to be detained." Her perceptions quickly changed when she was handcuffed and jailed by Miami police who ignored her press credentials. Her crime: Doing "nothing but walking down the street."
Newspapers in the Phoenix-based alt-weekly chain picked up seven of the 11 awards handed out last month in the under 150,000 circulation category of the National Association of Black Journalists' annual contest. Dallas Observer's Jim Schutze and Julie Lyons, Cleveland Scene's Thomas Francis and Riverfront Times' Jeannette Batz all were named first-place winners.
Skip Oliva, president of the nonprofit organization Citizens for Voluntary Trade, filed a motion Tuesday with a federal court in Ohio to intervene in the Justice Department's antitrust case against Village Voice Media and NT Media. If granted intervention, Oliva says he will appeal the decision approving a government-mandated settlement in the closure of papers in Cleveland and Los Angeles. Oliva's 15-page brief to the U.S. District Court in Cleveland details numerous allegations of misconduct and unconstitutional abuse of prosecutorial power by Justice.
New Times Executive Editor Mike Lacey calls Cleveland Free Times' recent attacks on New Times and Cleveland Scene "an explosion of bluster." Lacey accuses Free Times' Editor David Eden and Publisher Matt Fabyan of concocting "conspiracies wrapped in an ad hominem attack" and of publishing "organ discharge." He cites sales and profit figures that starkly contradict Free Times' assertion that it was winning the alternative newsweekly battle in Cleveland.
Marnye Oppenheim, who wrote the "Bite Me" restaurant column for New Times Los Angeles for two years and continued it at Phoenix New Times, has died, the LA Times reports. She was 32.
New Times writers swept the Newspaper Restaurant Review or Critique category of the 2003 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards with Jason Sheehan of Westword winning, while Jill Posey-Smith of Riverfront Times and Robb Walsh of Houston Press were finalists. Mark Stuertz of the Dallas Observer was the winner in the Newspaper, Magazine or Internet Reporting on Consumer Issues, Nutrition and/or Health category for his article “Green Giant." Dara Moskowitz, City Pages (Twin Cities) and Walsh were finalists in the newspaper series category.
Still on the alternative weekly beat, Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times critiques former mayor Richard Riordan's new weekly prototype and finds the LA Examiner aimed at the people who elected him -- affluent, educated and mostly white. Rutten, who reported on the antitrust investigation of Village Voice Media and New Times, takes a last slap at the two chains for "a sad and venal chapter in an otherwise vigorous -- often courageous -- history" of the alternative press in Los Angeles.
That's what The Village Voice's Cynthia Cotts asks when she looks at the consent decree signed by Village Voice Media and New Times that settled an antitrust investigation of their agreement to close competing papers in Los Angeles and Cleveland. She suggests the settlement, which requires the companies to resell assets to groups attempting to start new weeklies, "might represent a violation of the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and/or the prohibition on selective prosecution."
