Andrew Cash is the New Democratic Party's candidate for the Davenport electoral district, located in Toronto's west end. Cash, who is also a well-known singer-songwriter, was named the candidate of the social democratic party back in October but is gearing up his campaign with an initial fundraiser set for later this month. If elected, he would become a caucus colleague of his former bandmate Charlie Angus, who has served in Parliament since 2004. Due to the intricacies of Canadian electoral law, the date of the election is not yet set, but Cash tells AAN News that it will most likely happen in either the spring or fall of 2010.
In a story previewing 2010, NOW sized up city councillor Adam Giambrone's chances of becoming mayor. "He's young. He's bright. He's gay," the story read. "And he looks better than any of his challengers so far." But there was one problem, Giambrone says. "I'm not, in fact, gay," he wrote on Facebook. "Sarah, my partner, has taken the news in stride and with good humour and I'm sure I'll never hear the end of it from the LGBTQ people in my life." NOW has acknowledged the mistake and changed the phrasing to "gay-positive."
AAN News has learned of two great resources for anyone who is writing about the United Nations Climate Change Conference or climate change right now. First, climate scientists from the American Geophysical Union will be providing round-the-clock support for journalists reporting on the conference through Dec. 18. In addition, NOW Magazine's editor and CEO Alice Klein, who is attending the conference, is available for interviews about what's happening in Copenhagen. To set up an interview, email jasonh (at) nowtoronto.com or call 416-364-1300 ext. 372.
Last month, Robert Newman Design took a trip back through the Village Voice's cover archive to highlight some great design work; now he's trained his spotlight on Athens, Ga., alt-weekly Flagpole in a new collection posted to his Facebook page. "The Flagpole cover is a visual hybrid somewhere between the New Yorker and Seattle's The Stranger," Newman writes. "Flagpole's choice of illustrations (and the occasional photo) embrace a wide array of styles, but they are all cool."
The Toronto alt-weekly last week debuted NOW Magazine: The Movie, a nine-week web film series that simultaneously chronicles the paper's history and makes fun of it in the mockumentary style. In the movie, a fictional theater troupe is commissioned by NOW CEO Alice Klein to create a musical about the paper on the heels of its 25th anniversary in 2006, with that plot intertwined with archive footage from NOW's real-life history. "It is actually truly funny, and one of the only ways you can achieve that is to be prepared to take the piss out of yourself," editor and publisher Michael Hollett says. "It's entertaining, but at the same time there is real information that emerges about our history, which is a pretty proud one." The five-minute episodes, directed by Second City alum Brian G. Smith, will all be released on the NOW Magazine: The Movie microsite. You can check out the trailer below.
NOW Magazine - The Trailer from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.
"I felt like the kid who was the first to be picked for the school baseball team," See publisher Todd Kosloski says, describing how he felt at Saturday's annual meeting after his alt-weekly was admitted as an AAN member.
At the annual meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies this weekend in Tucson, AAN members approved the membership applications of Inland Empire Weekly of Corona, Calif., and Edmonton's See Magazine. In addition, the membership status of six current member papers that had changed hands in the last two years was affirmed.
Of the five newspapers that applied for AAN membership this year, the Membership Committee is recommending that two be voted into the association: See Magazine and Inland Empire Weekly. The committee is also recommending that six current members who've experienced ownership changes be reaffirmed. AAN members will vote on these applications, as well as other matters, at Saturday afternoon's Annual Meeting. In addition, the Membership Committee is recommending that AAN take a look at allowing only-online publications to join the association. UPDATE (3:17 PM EST): The membership committee's report as originally uploaded was incorrect when it said that See's owner, Great West Newspapers, was "the largest" media chain in Canada. It's a large company, but not the largest in the country. The document in the resource library has been updated with the correct information.
That's the question Ryerson Journalism Review's Daniel Kaszor set out to investigate in that magazine's Spring issue. He sits down with independent owners Ron Garth of Vue Weekly, Michael Hollett of NOW Magazine and Dan McLeod of the Georgia Straight, as well as an editor with Eye Weekly, a corporate-owned weekly that competes with NOW in Toronto. His conclusion? "Readers may find it difficult to spot major differences between the two breeds of paper ... [b]ut there are distinctions," Kaszor writes. "Corporate papers are usually more personality-driven and apolitical. And the indies are not so much labors of love as pure acts of will held together by shrewd owners with deep personal and financial interests in their papers."
