Matt Smith writes that this week's issue of The Nation, which features Jon Wiener's lament about changes that have taken place at LA Weekly since the paper changed hands in 2006, "reads as if were (sic) a schizophrenic-produced theme issue on your host, Village Voice Media." According to Smith, the July 16 issue of the weekly magazine juxtaposes Wiener's criticisms of the "staff cuts, heavy workload and misdirected investigative talent" at VVM with "another 3,000-word-plus story whose central thrust is based largely around Village Voice Media original reporting." In the latter, Liza Featherstone uses documents revealed in April by SF Weekly as a basis for her reporting on labor boss Andy Stern.
Sharry Smith replaced Amber Abram as publisher on April 1. Smith previously worked for the Florida alt-weekly from 1989-1999, then returned to be advertising director in October 2005. "I found myself longing to return to publishing," she says. "The reason I chose to work here back in 1989 was because I believed that Creative Loafing was in an ideal position to impact our community in a positive way, and I wanted to be a part of that," Smith says. "That's the same reason I chose to return in 2005."
So claims H. Brown, announcing his 6th Annual Bulldog Awards on the Web site of the Fog City Journal, which calls itself "an online news organization" focusing on Bay Area news. "More balding hippies carry (the Bay Guardian's) Election Day crib sheet into polls than any other rag," explains Brown, who gives his own publication the nod at number two. Brown also says SF Weekly columnist Matt Smith is the city's third-best political writer, even though he's "lost a step" and "(s)eems nuts at times." Smith is brilliant, says Brown: "He can see yesterday, today and tomorrow as one multi-valved heart fed by money, greed and bigotry."
According to Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, Attorney General Jim Petro is looking for potential antitrust violations that would result from the merger. The paper quotes a senior attorney with Petro's office who said the deal "raises new concerns that combining these two publishing companies would eliminate or restrain competition between them in some markets where they operate rival newsweeklies with overlapping advertising and news coverage." (Ed.: VVM and New Times no longer operate "rival newsweeklies" in the same market.) The attorney was commenting in response to a letter complaining about the merger written by Terry Smith, the editor of AAN-member paper The Athens News.
In a recent interview with John Dicker that appears in the September issue of The Toilet Paper (a monthly "Monster-Truck/Gay-Cowboy tabloid" based in Colorado Springs), Taibbi talks about his new gig with Rolling Stone and his recent departure from the New York Press. Taibbi offers a characteristically heated denunciation of columnist and former New York Press owner Russ Smith; says ex-editors Jeff Koyen and Alexander Zaitchik were scapegoats for the failures of the paper's management; and predicts new editor Harry Siegel ("a Smith protege") will turn the paper "into a dumb neocon rag."
Russ Smith, founder of Baltimore City Paper and co-founder of New York Press, talks to Gawker about the state of alternative papers. He thinks the industry is dealing with "the brain drain of talented youngsters who, 20 years ago, would be fresh blood but are now involved with Internet projects." Smith then tells writers Andrew Krucoff and Chris Gage that editors hoping to sustain alt-weekly success need to "focus on the quality of writing, rather than knee-jerk politics and Quentin Tarantino hagiography."
Readers of Gambit Weekly, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Miami New Times, Weekly Planet (Tampa), Weekly Planet (Sarasota), Folio Weekly and Orlando Weekly have lately seen Mother Nature at her worst. Distributed in areas affected by the hurricanes that have pounded Florida and surrounding states since August, these alt-weeklies have come out on schedule -- thanks to determined staffers and contingency plans.
