In a short blog post on the new Nation Investigative Fund website, Joe Conason says Paul Knight's 2009 story on problems with the Toyota Prius is just the latest example of alt-weeklies -- "those hippie outposts of the old print media" -- "provid[ing] an important outlet for investigative stories that are far ahead of their mainstream competitors." While Conason is certainly right about alts often getting a head start on big stories like the Prius problems, he is wrong about one thing: The story in question originated in the Houston Press, where Knight is a staff reporter. It was reprinted in the OC Weekly and a few other VVM papers.
While the economic downturn hurt the paper a bit, Press publisher Jed Morey tells CNN Money there were no mass layoffs -- and the paper was back in the black by the end of last year. Morey pegs the Press' success in part to the decision of Long Island's daily paper Newsday to go partly behind a paywall last year. The Press seized the opportunity and began running more general news on the web, to appeal to those who might not pay for Newsday online. Since then, Morey says traffic has gone up 600 percent. "It is not about a newspaper, it is not about the physical product or even the experience. It's about the quality of the journalism," he says. "If you stay true to that, we think that there is several different places you can go with that. The web being one of them."
As Toyota acknowledges design problems with the brakes in its hybrid Prius, it's worth taking a look back at Paul Knight's April 2009 story that ran in the Houston Press and several other alt-weeklies, which details the car's "unintended acceleration" problems. "Toyota spokespeople quoted in the story blamed misinstalled floor mats and simple driver error for the wild rides," reports the OC Weekly, which also ran the story. "But now that the U.S. and Japanese governments are applying heat, the world's largest carmaker seems to be taking Prius horror stories more seriously."
Michael Patrick Nelson, who been with the Press since its inception in 2003, was most recently managing editor. He will take over as the paper's top editor following Robbie Woliver's departure last summer. "No one knows the Press better than Michael and he has earned the respect of not only every reporter in the newsroom but everyone in our organization," says publisher Jed Morey. "We're all excited about the Nelson era."
A few years ago, threatened by media giant Gannett's attempt to control local print distribution via The Distribution Network (TDN), the Jackson Free Press and other local publishers banded together to form the Mississippi Independent Publishers' Alliance (MIPA). MIPA then began a process of buying, placing and managing its own system of multi-publication news boxes around the city. Now it looks like MIPA's efforts paid off. JFP publisher Todd Stauffer tells AAN News that the Gannett-owned Jackson Clarion-Ledger has quietly picked up all their TDN boxes and apparently closed out their program. "I'm not sure if this is a trend company-wide for Gannett, but it looks like the 'control-free-distribution' chapter is no longer in the Gannett playbook for Jackson," he says.
"Manhattan Media has thrived as the media landscape has fragmented," Crain's New York reports. The privately-held company, which owns a stable of community weeklies and local specialty magazines, says revenue has grown fivefold since 2002 and advertising revenue for its newspapers is up this year over last. Crain's doesn't make much specific mention of the Press, which Manhattan Media purchased in 2007, except to note that "the company is still tinkering" with the alt-weekly.
"For nearly ten years now, I have done my job incognito," Robb Walsh writes. "Now I am joining the ranks of no-longer-anonymous restaurant critics." He notes that fellow VVM food writers Jason Sheehan (Westword) and Jonathan Gold (L.A. Weekly) have had few problems since moving away from the time-honored tradition of being an anonymous food critic. "[I've] noticed absolutely no difference in being recognized in restaurants," Gold says. "None. Zero."
"If you are wondering why I am so quiet lately its because I have been quarantined with N1H1," Robb Walsh tweeted last week. But being stuck in his house under doctor's orders didn't stop him from doing his job, he tells Washington City Paper. "There was no change in diet at all. I didn’t even have to stop writing," he says of his quarantine, which ended this Tuesday. "I just reviewed take out food." (Walsh further explains the process in a blog post titled "How to Review a Restaurant When You're Quarantined.")
AAN News has just received a copy of Da Capo's Best Food Writing 2009, and it is chock full of alt-weekly talent. Included in the collection are stories from City Pages' Rachel Hutton ("Spam: It's Not Just for Inboxes Anymore"), New Times Broward-Palm Beach's John Linn ("Highway to Hog Heaven"), SF Weekly's Peter Jamison ("Out of the Wild"), The Stranger's Bethany Jean Clement ("The Beauty of the Beast"), Washington City Paper's Tim Carman ("How Not to Hire a Chef"), and Westword's Jason Sheehan ("The Last of the Great $10 Steaks"). The book also includes a selection from Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh's book on oysters, and is slated to be released this fall.
Yesterday, we noted that L.A. Weekly music editor Randall Roberts had been named one of the six journalists to receive a 2009 USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship. However, we neglected to note that Houston Press contributor Kelly Klaasmeyer will also be in the 2009 class of fellows when the three-week program begins this November. We apologize for the omission.
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