Nashville Scene accidentally posted a draft version of a theater review on its website, which included portions that some readers found racist.
New Times' Martin Cizmar has sold his book Chubster to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Publishers Marketplace describes it as an "appropriately snarky weight-loss and lifestyle guide for hipsters looking to shed pounds and stay cool," according to Grub Street New York. (Publishers Marketplace is available to subscribers only.) "Expect the core program to center around a regimen of street-cart tacos, Old Granddad, and cigarettes," Grub Street writes.
New Times editorial operations manager Jay Bennett, a 40-year-old music fan and musician, is authoring the "Nothing Not New" blog, where each weekday, he listens to one new record and writes about it. Music editor Martin Cizmar says the project springs from Bennett's "aesthetic atrophy," an "unavoidable consequence of aging" defined as the "wasting away of the ability to appreciate new, different, or avant-garde music." Checking in a little more than two months into the year-long experiment, Bennett says it has been "fun, but difficult," adding: "It's like traveling abroad for two weeks but really missing American junk food after day 10, or dining out so much that you've forgotten the simple joy of preparing and eating a home-cooked meal."
AAN member L.A. Alternative has printed its final issue, reports online journal LAObserved. In a letter to staffers, owner Martin Albornoz says that the weekly's "problem has never been attracting loyal readers, but the cutthroat competition with our corporate rivals has made it harder to get and keep new advertisers." The newspaper was previously known as the L.A. Alternative Press; the name was shortened in Nov. 2005 when the paper shifted from a biweekly to a weekly schedule. Albornoz says that the news organization will experiment throughout October with online publishing. "The fact that we lasted this long is still a feat," he says. "In fact, it's a real testament to the authentic voice we've created together."
