In a Feb. 1 editor's note, the Bay Guardian's executive editor responded to Craig Newmark's AAN West keynote by arguing that the Craigslist founder's "building community" rap is "bullshit," and that his creation is the online-classifieds equivalent of Wal-Mart. The blogospere responded quickly. Tech exec Anil Dash says he lost his job at the Village Voice when the paper's classified revenue was decimated by Craigslist: "I am exactly the person Redmond is ostensibly arguing on behalf of, and so I can say with certainty that he's profoundly wrong," writes Dash. At BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis calls Redmond's editorial "jealous whining," then seizes on his example of Burlington, Vt., as a community where Craigslist's arrival could hurt locally-owned media. After doing a quick once-over on Seven Days' Web site, Jarvis declares the Burlington alt-weekly insufficiently digital, which leads to comments from Seven Days writer and blogger Cathy Resmer (who blogged about Redmond, too) and co-publisher and editor Paula Routly, who writes, "If we're behind Craig Newmark technologically, it's because we’ve been busting our asses for ten years trying to put out an excellent newspaper that serves, and reflects, this community." Click here to watch the blogosphere stomp on Redmond in real-time.
San Francisco Bay Guardian is planning a year-long anniversary celebration, starting with a strikingly different look. In the Jan. 11 issue, Executive Editor Tim Redmond calls the new design "both far more modern and in keeping with the historical mission of this newspaper." The Bay Guardian was founded in 1966 by Bruce B. Brugmann and his wife Jean Dibble; Brugmann is still the editor and publisher, and Dibble is the associate publisher. The paper has also re-adopted its original logo; Redmond says the move demonstrates that the vision Brugmann and Dibble had "when they started the Guardian is still what we're about today: Printing the news and raising hell."
Tim Redmond got a call from Bree Hocking, a reporter for Roll Call, asking his opinion about House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. He told Hocking that Pelosi isn't the typical "San Francisco liberal" that some have called her, and Hocking included his comments in an article. The article drew the attention of a producer for Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, who invited Redmond to appear on the show. His appearance went so well that he was later invited to discuss politics on Laura Ingraham's radio program.
In an article penned by Executive Editor Tim Redmond, the 35-year-old weekly announces that it has "launched the first stage of a legal offensive to stop" its New Times-owned competitor "from engaging in anticompetitive business practices that may violate federal and state (antitrust) laws." Redmond also details a settled lawsuit in which the Bay Guardian charged a sales rep who had decided to jump ship with secretly downloading over 1,000 pages of sales records and providing them to her then-new employer, SF Weekly.
