Over 1,000 readers contacted Roundy's Supermarkets after the company asked Shepherd Express to remove its newspapers from Pick 'n Save stores.
"Last Tuesday I lost a dear friend," writes publisher Louis Fortis. "Dusti was the first person I hired when I arrived at the Shepherd Express more than 10 years ago. She was very special to the Shepherd and also to me." The 36-year-old is survived by her 7-year-old twins, Ashley and Riley. For those in the area, a memorial visitation will be held Saturday, Dec. 8, from 11 am to 1:45 pm at Church and Chapel, 380 W. Bluemound Road, Waukesha, Wisconsin. Memorial services will begin at 2 pm. In lieu of flowers, a memorial trust for the twins will be set up by Dusti's parents. Look for more details on the trust on AAN.org soon.
"Why can't I, as a fellow weekly-newspaper guy, muster up much sympathy for the Shepherd Express?," asks Weekly associate editor Bill Frost in response to yesterday's news that Milwaukee's alt-weekly was having some distribution issues involving the local daily (and its free weekly) and coffee giant Starbucks. "Because City Weekly has never been allowed into Salt Lake City Starbucks; at least the Express had a foot in the door for a while," he writes. "Now, just as Salt Lake City residents have for years, Milwaukee-ites will have to sip their overpriced Charbucks while reading an inferior knockoff of a weekly that has an exclusive, paid-for in."
"We were thrown out of Starbucks because of a deal the Journal Sentinel cut with Starbucks' regional office, where the Journal Sentinel demanded that the Shepherd Express be excluded from Starbucks newspaper racks," writes Express publisher and editor-in-chief Louis Fortis. The Sentinel-owned free weekly MKE then ran an ad claiming it was "the exclusive free weekly" available at Starbucks stores around Milwaukee. But a regional manager says "the decision as to whether a particular Starbucks carries the Shepherd will be at the discretion of each individual store manager." The controversy with the coffee giant comes as the paper celebrates its 25th anniversary. In this week's cover story, assistant editor Lisa Kaiser traces the Express' journey from "a monthly 'free expression magazine' by English majors at UW-Milwaukee" to what it is today.
