Fast Forward Weekly publisher and founding editor Ian Chiclo has left the publishing industry to become director of digital marketing for Tourism Calgary.
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.
"I've been privileged to enjoy the alt-weekly journalist's brief of reporting and writing lengthy articles on the various topics, from the serious to the fanciful, appealing to the wide-ranging interests of Rhode Islanders," writes Ian Donnis. He is leaving the alt-weekly to become public radio station WRNI's political reporter.
Ian Blackburn, who in 1991 began the Knoxville, Tenn., alt-weekly with Ashley Capps, Rand Pearson and Margaret Weston, is leaving the paper. In an article titled "Farewell, Ian," associate editor Jack Neely calls Blackburn, who's held the title of systems manager in recent years, a "computer nerd with a wild bohemian heart." According to the article, Blackburn's departure is due, at least in part, to the discontinuation of MetroBlab, the paper's online chat room. Neely calls MetroBlab "a subject of contention" and explains that associate publisher John Wright "pulled the plug on it last month."
