Sunday's New York Times Book Review made note of the "devoted following" for Alan Furst's espionage thrillers -- but before he wrote bestsellers, Furst's fiction was serialized on the pages of Seattle Weekly. Editor-in-Chief Knute Berger reminds readers on his blog that the Weekly printed installments of two Furst novels in the late '70s.
The Weekly's editor in chief tells the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that his autonomy has decreased since the merger between New Times and Village Voice Media, but that he was not forced out by the new ownership. Berger has left the alt-weekly twice before, each time to be asked back. Berger announced his resignation July 3 on his blog. "I've been through four ownership groups, five publishers, and have seen the paper into the online era. Now we're six months into the Village Voice/New Times merger era, and I've decided it's time to be a free-range mossback again," he wrote.
"Do journalists in New York do any original thinking at all?" asks Chuck Taylor, managing editor of Seattle Weekly. The paper's July 20, 2005 cover -- which just won a third-place AltWeekly Award for Illustration -- is remarkably similar to the cover of the most recent BusinessWeek. Both feature the banner headline "Bill Gates Gets Schooled" and depict Gates in a classroom.
Creative Loafing Media CEO Ben Eason (pictured) has tapped Coe to become the Atlanta paper's fourth publisher in less than three years, according to a story on its Web site. The last publisher, Michael Sigman, only lasted 10 days. Coe worked for New Times, Inc., for 17 years and Village Voice Media for three years before the two companies merged last October. "I felt like the opportunities for me in Atlanta were going to be greater than they might be in this combined, larger company," he says. Coe will be focusing on building revenue and expanding the weekly's online presence; editorial content "is best left to the editors," he says. Eason has also hired a new associate publisher for the newspaper: David Schmall, formerly of Sacramento News & Review, Minneapolis's the Rake and the Dallas Morning News' free commuter daily, Quick.
