The Indianapolis alt-weekly "relaunched" this week with an expanded news section incorporating a "new secondary focus on practical issues that affect readers' everyday lives," and a new A&E section that consolidates the paper's fine arts and pop culture coverage, according to its new advertising newsletter. The paper also is reducing ad rates and applying a full-volume discount to all ads to coincide with the redesign. Other elements of the revamped NUVO include larger font, new featurettes, and a crisper presentation.
On Monday, a federal grand jury returned an 18-count indictment accusing three individuals -- including a woman named Ho -- of operating brothels in the Denver area. Court documents suggest the defendants drummed up business by purchasing ads in Westword. Several hundred miles east in Indianapolis, a woman was arrested this week on prostitution charges after an undercover officer responded to her ad in Nuvo that said, "For An Afternoon So Sweet to Treat, Call Candy." And last month in the nation's capital, the feds seized the assets of a woman accused of running a prostitution ring. According to court documents, the alleged madam spread her ad dollars among several local media outlets, including the Washington City Paper.
The Indianapolis alt-weekly was the subject of an August 2004 AAN News article that detailed editor and publisher Kevin McKinney's eco-friendly business practices, including a switch to newsprint with 80 percent recycled content. Now the paper has gone even further, and McKinney claims the completely recycled paper is whiter and cleaner -- and holds ink better -- than before. He suggests that interested parties contact Mike Fox, the paper's production manager, for details, including information about how to buy the newsprint.
Last weekend, the Hoosier Environmental Council presented NUVO a Green Business Award in recognition of its eco-friendly practices. The Indianapolis alt-weekly uses newsprint with 80 percent recycled content and takes energy-saving measures, such as having lights and computers on sleep mode. In an online staff report, NUVO suggests that conservation-minded readers "take the time to ask your favorite local newspaper to consider a higher-recycled content."
Freelance journalist Becky Oberg wanted to expand her reportage for NUVO, an Indianapolis alt-weekly, into a book. Carlo DeVito, publisher of Chamberlain Bros., a Penguin imprint, was looking for new projects. Despite the fact that Oberg was, in her words, "an unknown, unagented, first-time author," DeVito called her and asked if she'd turn her story about an Army private's desertion to Canada via an "underground railroad" into a book. Why was a publisher scouring alt-weeklies for book ideas? Says DeVito: "We're always looking for a good story and a new point of view, and that's what a lot of these papers express."
Kevin McKinney, editor and publisher of Indianapolis's NUVO, subscribes to the tenets of reduce, reuse and recycle. Such thinking led to the alt-weekly's recent move to print on paper with nearly 80 percent recycled content. "We had gotten all our process worked out, so now we could look at more environmentally friendly options," says production manager Mike Fox (pictured). A box of factoids on NUVO's table of contents page lists the resources saved annually by printing on this paper, 6,256 trees and 442,777 gallons of water among them. And, says McKinney, "there's no noticeable difference in photos or art and no change in cost."
Sometimes word of mouth is a more effective way of promoting a paper than a print ad. That's why some alternative newsweeklies send street teams out to bars, movie theaters and cultural events to hand out freebies and stir up interest in their papers. When they dispatch their street teams to public places, alt-weeklies like NUVO and Boston's Weekly Dig are relying on a centuries-old marketing technique the music industry revived.
