The Sex-Positive Journalism Awards have announced the winners of the 2009 Sexies, the annual awards that go to stories that "improve the quality of dialogue around sex and create a more well-informed reading public." Seven Days' Judith Levine took home a first-place win in the Opinion category, where she also tied for second place with a Village Voice piece by Tristan Taormino. Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper picked up a third-place win in the Columns category for "The Sexist," while in the News/Features (Alt-Weeklies, Monthlies) category the Alibi's Marisa Demarco placed third and Rich Kane (OC Weekly) and Michael J. Mooney (New Times Broward-Palm Beach) both were named runners-up.
So says Chicago Reader Publisher and COO Jane Levine (pictured), who admits that Tribune Publishing's new youth-oriented daily tabloid has made it more difficult to reach Tribune clients who don't advertise in the Reader. "It's just easier for them and way cheaper" to add RedEye to their Tribune media spend, Levine tells Media Daily News. "These papers are going after, and I don't think very successfully, an age," Levine says. "They want 18 to 34, period, young for young's sake. What the reader of our paper is and always has been is more of psychographic and a lifestyle."
Jane Levine, chief operating officer of Chicago Reader, Inc., is beginning the search for a publisher, who will handle day-to-day operations. When that person is in place and trained, Levine will step back and decide what her role will be at the company. Levine has been in alternative newsweeklies since she started as an intern at the Reader in 1973. "I can't even think what the next step will look like until we have a great publisher in place and I know what their skills are," she says. "Right now there are too many trees in my way to see the forest."
While publicly traded media companies are laying off employees and warning Wall Street of sharply diminished returns, Chicago's free circulation papers are holding their own, Kathy Bergen of the Chicago Tribune reports. "There isn't the voracious need to satisfy shareholders and start making layoffs," Richard Karpel, executive director of AAN, tells the Trib. Chicago Reader Publisher Jane Levine tells Bergen: "Our total revenue in 2001 will be about even with 2000, and I feel blessed for that."
Washington City Paper is getting great resumes for Howard Witt's old editor's job, and for sales positions, because of media layoffs, says Jane Levine, CEO of City Paper's parent, Chicago Reader Inc. Levine tells the Washington Business Journal: "It's a great time to be hiring. There aren't many silver linings to the clouds that are out there, but this is one of them."
Alternative newsweeklies are feeling the one-two punch of war and recession. National advertising is down across the board, but classifieds are providing a cushion. While several papers have had to lay off employees, others are taking the opportunity to add sales staff.
As part of the unprecedented daily news coverage In Pittsburgh Newsweekly is now running on its Web site, an expert from Carnegie Mellon University says Tuesday's terrorist attack may have been targeting U.S. defense and financial communications centers. If they weren't this time, they could attack our critical information systems next time, says Jeffrey Hunker, dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School.
