A few days after Byrd and Melanie Billings were murdered in their Florida home in early July, Independent News publisher Rick Outzen ran an exclusive on his blog disputing the state attorney's version of events and suggesting the murders may have been a contract killing. Despite the story being disputed by competing news outlets and other individuals, the local sheriff is now investigating the claim, saying that many of Outzen's sources have been correct. Outzen, whose Pensacola weekly has applied for AAN membership a few times and is a familiar face at AAN conventions, tells the New York Times that he feels vindicated, and his work has led to an assignment from The Daily Beast and praise from local officials. "I don't always agree with him, but he is the conscience of the community," the chairman of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce says. "People have come to trust that Rick's going to be out there, pushing us in ways sometimes we're not comfortable with."
Former Stanford Group Company vice president Tiffany Angelle has sued The Independent Weekly of Lafayette, La., as well as the paper's editorial director Leslie Turk, for their coverage of the company's alleged $8 billion investment scam and its effect on the local community. Angelle is suing the paper for defamation for an April story that reported she had given a reluctant investor a Rolex watch and a lavish trip to keep his business, but the Independent is fighting the suit, saying it was filed "to obstruct the paper's coverage" of the scandal. The Independent, citing Louisiana's anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law, filed a motion to strike the suit earlier this month.
Five alt-weeklies won a number of awards in the Oregon and Southwest Washington chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists' 2008 Excellence in Journalism Awards. Among non-daily newspapers in Oregon, Willamette Week took home 10 first-place awards, while Eugene Weekly took home one. Among alt-weeklies in the Northwest region, WW won six first-place awards; Seattle Weekly won four; the Missoula Independent won two; and the Pacific Northwest Inlander won one.
Independent senior editor Matt Kettmann tells us via email that the paper has published about 50 stories since the Jesusita wildfire started on Tuesday afternoon at www.independent.com/jesusita. The paper has been doing up-to-the-minute coverage with a staff of about a dozen -- on top of putting out a print edition this week as well. Kettmann says its an example of "how weeklies can handle pretty important and heavy loads."
Lafayette's The Independent Weekly won 29 awards and New Orleans' Gambit Weekly won 10 in the Louisiana Press Association's annual contest. The Independent snagged first place for Editorial Cartoon, Feature Story, Lifestyle Coverage, Multimedia Element, Web Project and six advertising awards. Gambit won firsts for Regular Column and online advertising. The two papers tied for first place in Community Service/Service to Readers.
Two AAN members are finalists in this year's EPpy Awards, which "honor the best websites in the media world." Las Vegas Weekly is a finalist for best entertainment website with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors, while Baltimore City Paper is a finalist for best weekly newspaper-affiliated website, a category the Santa Barbara Independent won last year. Winners of the awards, which are sponsored by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek magazines, will be announced on May 7.
In May, Matt Gibson plans to launch and edit Montana Headwall, a quarterly lifestyle magazine focusing on the state's outdoor recreation scene. Initial plans call for a distribution of 10,000 copies. Most copies will be free of charge but the magazine will cost $4.95 at certain locations like supermarkets and bookstores.
Watson talks with WUNC-FM's Frank Stasio about her long tenure at the North Carolina alt-weekly and the current state of the business. "We were in existence for about 16 years before we made a profit," she says of the Indy, which was launched in 1983. Now, though, Watson says that the paper is financially healthy, all things considered. "When you can compare notes with [other alt-weeklies], we're doing pretty well," she says. She attributes the Indy's resilience in part to the local economy's relative health and also to the leanness of the organization. With only about 30 staffers, she says the paper "can kind of turn on a dime when we see we need to tighten our belt."
Alan Mutter says newspapers shouldn't charge for access to their websites unless they provide content that is "unique and valuable." As an example, he says the pay wall erected by the daily Santa Barbara News-Press has left the paper with less than half of the traffic generated by the much smaller Independent. When wildfires threatened Santa Barbara in November, Mutter says, "scant information" was available for non-subscribers on the daily's site, while the alt-weekly's site -- which won a 2008 EPpy Award for best weekly newspaper-affiliated website -- "brimmed with up-to-the-minute bulletins, first-person reports" and fire photos.
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