Long-time General Manager Amy Austin was promoted to publisher of D.C.'s alt-weekly, taking over from Thomas Yoder, who also has responsibilities in Chicago with CP's sister paper. "I think we've gotten to the point now where this is just a mature, strong paper with not only a great person in Amy, but a good management staff under Amy," COO Jane Levine tells the Washington Business Journal.
Saying it’s "just business," the Tribune Co. has ordered five Advocate*Weekly billing and administrative staff to move their offices into the Hartford Courant building. The Tribune Co. says the move will help consolidate different billing and other business practices. "People over here are saying that if they do this, what's … next?" Advocate*Weekly CEO Fran Zankowski tells AAN News.
Preview Connecticut, a free monthly magazine, will be devoted to a first look at Connecticut arts events rather than reviews, says New Mass Media Inc. in a news release. New Mass Media also publishes four AAN-member alt-weeklies, Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate, Valley Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly. The glossy magazine will appear the first week of every month and will be distributed statewide.
San Diego CityBEAT published its inaugural issue last Wednesday, and the daily responds, "Bring it on." David L. Coddon writing in The San Diego Union-Tribune's weekly arts and entertainment guide, "Night & Day," says the new alt-weekly is trying to get a jump on both the daily and its 30-year-old alternative newsweekly rival, San Diego Reader, by publishing a day earlier. "Another 'voice' in local print media isn't bad," Coddon says.
Independent Weekly's acquisition of Raleigh's alt-weekly the Spectator will allow the newly merged Independent to beef up its A&E coverage and leaves Creative Loafing with more cash for its four AAN-member papers. "One of us ultimately had to give in to create a single financially successful paper, and we yielded to local ownership," said Ben Eason, CEO of Creative Loafing Inc.
The ink is barely dry on the sale of SLAMM, a San Diego music biweekly, but the new owners have set Aug. 21 as the launch date for a new redesigned alternative newspaper, San Diego CityBeat. The new weekly will target the 21- to 45-year-old crowd and San Diego's central university and historic neighborhoods, Publisher Charles Gerencser says. "I wouldn't have moved my pregnant wife and sold my house in Los Angeles, where I've lived my whole life, if I didn't think this was going to be an amazingly successful venture," Gerencser says.
