Edmonton alt-weeklies SEE Magazine and VUE Weekly, once bitter rivals, have announced plans to merge.
Delivery driver Doug Fletcher suffered a fatal heart attack while delivering SEE last Thursday. He was 74 years old. "He was a very loveable personality," says Lorraine Canuel, Fletcher's wife of 16 years. "Anyone who would talk to him, with anybody that he saw or talked to he was always very personable. He was a good man, a very nice person."
"I felt like the kid who was the first to be picked for the school baseball team," See publisher Todd Kosloski says, describing how he felt at Saturday's annual meeting after his alt-weekly was admitted as an AAN member.
At the annual meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies this weekend in Tucson, AAN members approved the membership applications of Inland Empire Weekly of Corona, Calif., and Edmonton's See Magazine. In addition, the membership status of six current member papers that had changed hands in the last two years was affirmed.
Of the five newspapers that applied for AAN membership this year, the Membership Committee is recommending that two be voted into the association: See Magazine and Inland Empire Weekly. The committee is also recommending that six current members who've experienced ownership changes be reaffirmed. AAN members will vote on these applications, as well as other matters, at Saturday afternoon's Annual Meeting. In addition, the Membership Committee is recommending that AAN take a look at allowing only-online publications to join the association. UPDATE (3:17 PM EST): The membership committee's report as originally uploaded was incorrect when it said that See's owner, Great West Newspapers, was "the largest" media chain in Canada. It's a large company, but not the largest in the country. The document in the resource library has been updated with the correct information.
