The Association of Alternative Newsmedia board of directors met in Detroit on Saturday, December 3. It was the first meeting of the current board that was elected at AAN's annual meeting in July.
At the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies annual meeting on Saturday, July 23 in New Orleans, members voted unanimously to change the organization's name to Association of Alternative Newsmedia. The association also elected Colorado Springs Independent CEO Fran Zankowski as President and admitted its first online-only publication: The American Independent News Network.
Chris Keating, who was publisher of SF Weekly from 2004-2006, will relocate to San Antonio and take over as the Current's publisher effective Aug. 1, AAN News has learned. He replaces Chris Sexson, who took the publisher spot at the Current's Times-Shamrock sister publication Metro Times in mid-June.
San Antonio Current publisher Chris Sexson has accepted the position of publisher at Detroit's Metro Times. Both papers are owned by Times-Shamrock Communications. Sexson, who has been with the Current for five years, will take over at Metro Times in mid-June.
Jeremy Voas, editor of Detroit's Metro Times since October 2001, was fired last week, reports the Detroit News. He contends the dismissal was prompted by his disagreement with publisher Lisa Rudy over the paper's mission in general and its emphasis on special sections in particular. "I thought if the paper wanted to do more of that kind of thing they needed to hire a special staff to do more promotional issues," he says. Curt Guyette, news editor at the Metro Times, says Voas' departure will be addressed in Wednesday's issue.
Following a nine-year absence, former account executive Lisa Rudy (pictured) returns to Detroit's alt-weekly to replace David Jost, who resigned as publisher last month. Rudy says Metro Times is her kind of paper: “I like everything it stands for. It’s just so community-based. It's hip, but it's real. I like the kind of reader that is interested in Metro Times, readers that like to be challenged.”
