Lather Weekly, a 9-month-old arts and entertainment publication founded by a former Independent Weekly editor, is dead. Mark Hornburg started the biweekly publication in December, hoping to reach "the Raleigh hipster scene," according to Joanna Kakissis of The News & Observer. Hornburg says the August 7-20 issue will be the paper's last, though he says he plans to revive the publication online. Lather's demise was announced only four days after the News & Observer ran a 2200-word feature story (see below) about the fledgling paper.
Point-of-view reporting. A hip, irreverent voice. In-depth coverage of local underdogs. And, of course, free circulation. New York Sports Express applies the elements of alternative journalism to create a new kind of paper: the local sports weekly. "No one else has done it -- and I like the action of creating new product," says President and Publisher Chuck Coletti. The paper's goal, says Editor Spike Vrusho, is "just to keep the way-too-serious sports fans laughing."
Steve May and his wife Cherry Fisher May are picking a fight where other publishers might fear to tread, readying themselves for head- to-head competition with Gannett. Beginning this Friday, they will begin publishing an alternative newsweekly in Lafayette, La., where Gannett owns both the daily newspaper, The Daily Advertiser, and its 23-year-old weekly, The Times of Acadiana. The Mays used to own The Times, and their anger over what it has become is fueling their launch of a paper they have pointedly named The Independent. "Gannett has destroyed The Times," Steve May says. "These guys are Sears managers who have a one- size-fits-all approach to local publishing."
Steve May, who owned Lafayette, Louisiana's highly regarded Times of Acadiana until selling it in 1998, plans to return to the market in September with a new weekly paper. May and his wife, Cherry Fisher May, last month bought a monthly lifestyle magazine and will convert it to a weekly to compete with the Times, which is now owned by Gannett, also the publisher of the Lafayette's only daily paper. "They have screwed up my newspaper so badly and I think it’s part of a plan to steadily bleed The Times of character and influence and somehow, divert it into the daily," May says.
Executive Editor John Yarmuth confirms to a LEO columnist that an acquisition of the Louisville, Ky., alternative is being discussed. Writer Tom Peterson says LEO’s suitors reportedly have an affection — rather than a formula — for operating alternative weeklies. "But as LEO staffers await news, the questions and the uncertainty fly, wafting through the offices, leaking from behind closed office doors and in the wake of hushed conversations," he writes. "Will it happen, and if it does, what will be different?"
In an area as large as Los Angeles, there are plenty of opportunities to serve niches, says Group Publisher David Comden, who recently launched two new weeklies in the market. Southland has assembled an all-star cast of alternative journalism veterans at LA CityBEAT and ValleyBEAT, and with the company's paper in Pasadena, now circulates 140,000 papers each week in the L.A. basin. Comden says he'll offer low-price options to advertisers and an "alternative to the alternative" for LA's younger readers.
"You need this," claims the debut editorial as Southland Publishing launches two new alternative papers in the Los Angeles area after buying the assets of New Times L.A. "In recent years local readers have experienced their own pain when two local weeklies -- the Los Angeles Reader and the New Times L.A. -- were prematurely shuttered for no reason other than financial expediency," the editorial states. "They mattered, and then they were gone." For their part, the mantra of LA CityBEAT and ValleyBEAT is "to explore, to challenge, and to celebrate the substance and irreverence of our vast city."
New Times Executive Editor Mike Lacey calls Cleveland Free Times' recent attacks on New Times and Cleveland Scene "an explosion of bluster." Lacey accuses Free Times' Editor David Eden and Publisher Matt Fabyan of concocting "conspiracies wrapped in an ad hominem attack" and of publishing "organ discharge." He cites sales and profit figures that starkly contradict Free Times' assertion that it was winning the alternative newsweekly battle in Cleveland.
The first alternative newspaper in history to be spawned by an antitrust settlement hit the streets last week exploding with entrepreneurial energy and vitriol directed at its main competitor, Cleveland Scene. Debuting with a summer-special issue weighing in at 112 pages, the new Cleveland Free Times unleashed a fusillade of name-calling and planted the flag of "local" ownership even though all but a sliver of the paper is owned by Times Publishing of Erie, Pa.
Joe Sullivan, publisher of Metro Pulse for 10 years, has sold the Knoxville, Tenn., weekly to Brian Conley, a general contractor who has development contracts with the city. Conley, who was briefly a co-owner of the Pulse in the mid-1990s, pledges he will guard the alt-weekly's editorial independence, even as it investigates his own dealings with the city (see story link below). Sullivan stays on as editor in chief and columnist.
