That's the veteran designer's take after browsing the Seattle alt-weekly's online cover archive. "The Stranger covers are like the cool punk version of The New Yorker, with illustrations, photographs and graphic design that are stand-alone visual statements, with lots of attitude and passion," Newman writes on the Society for Publication Design's blog. "Like The New Yorker, The Stranger covers are the visual voice of the publication, a dialogue each week between the paper and its readers."

Continue ReadingRobert Newman: Many of The Stranger’s Covers are ‘Ready for Framing’

Dave Segal, who resigned as The Stranger's music editor in 2006 after secretly allowing an employee from ad sales to write pseudonymously for the paper's Line Out blog and music section, has been hired as a music writer. "Whatever Segal's missteps as an editor, he remains an impeccable music writer -- passionate, knowledgeable, diverse in his tastes -- and so, after several rounds of musical chairs, we're bringing him back as a staff writer," writes current music editor Eric Grandy. "He'll have no managerial responsibilities -- to the point, he won't be hiring any freelancers -- but he'll get to do what he's best at, which is writing about music." Segal was most recently music editor at OC Weekly.

Continue ReadingFormer Music Editor of The Stranger Returns as Staff Writer

Friday was Bradley Steinbacher's last day at The Stranger. The paper's nameplate (pictured) was adjusted this week in his honor, and the staff celebrated with a tenderly worded send-off from public editor A. Birch Steen, along with a series of blog posts too voluminous to link to, including this one, which was iPhoned in by Brad's boss, Dan.

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Honors Departing Managing Editor

A federal judge says the author and "Sonics Death Watch" columnist Sherman Alexie can testify for the city of Seattle in its trial next week against the Seattle SuperSonics, the Seattle Times reports. The team's ownership group wants to pay off the final two years of its lease at Seattle's arena and move the team to Oklahoma City for next season, while the city of Seattle is suing in federal court to force the team to fulfill the lease. The city's lawyers wanted to call Alexie because he's a season-ticket holder, a big fan and could discuss the team's importance in Seattle. Attorneys for the Sonics claimed he had nothing relevant to say, and had asked to get him off the witness list.

Continue ReadingJudge Says The Stranger Columnist Can Testify in Basketball Trial

Lawyers for the Seattle SuperSonics' owners don't want Sherman Alexie, the author who also pens the "Sonics Death Watch" column for the Stranger, testifying at an upcoming trial that likely will determine where the team will play next season, the Seattle Times reports. The ownership group wants to pay off the final two years of its lease at Seattle's arena and move the team to Oklahoma City for next season, while the city of Seattle is suing in federal court to force the team to fulfill the lease. "Other than being a season ticket holder, it is unclear what foundation or testimonial knowledge" Alexie would bring to the trial, the owners' lawyers claim in a motion filed Tuesday. "What is clear are his biased, profanity-laden views" about the owners, it continues. The Stranger yesterday posted a profanity-filled fake letter to the judge, which says, among other things, that "it's pig-fuckingly clear that the facts undercut Mr. Taylor's contention that Mr. Alexie is irrelevant to this case."

Continue ReadingBasketball Team’s Lawyers Want Stranger Columnist Off Witness List

The company that owns The Stranger and Portland Mercury announces the release today of Foundation, "a highly customizable, fully integrated content-management system for alt-weeklies." The new system, which was developed in partnership with DesertNet, includes dynamic calendars, city guides, user profiles, and extensive editorial tools. "With its customizable layouts and components, Foundation will reduce alt-weeklies' reliance on expensive web development," the Index Newspaper press release says.

Continue ReadingIndex Newspapers & DesertNet Unveil New Content Management System

"We recently discovered that an art review by Nate Lippens published in The Stranger in August 2004 bears striking similarities to an art review by John Miller published in ArtForum in the summer of 2002," editor Christopher Frizzelle wrote last week. On advice from the Poynter Institute, the paper decided to take down and reexamine all of Lippens' stories, and will re-post the ones that are OK "as quickly as we can." When contacted by The Stranger by email, Lippens wrote: "I'm, of course, deeply embarrassed by this. I feel terrible." The next day the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported it was "looking at dozens of pieces written by Lippens" after editors discovered similarities between something he wrote for the daily and Art in America magazine. Lippens has also freelanced for Seattle Weekly, which has "found no evidence thus far of any plagiarism" in the handful of pieces he wrote for them, editor Mike Seely tells AAN News in an email.

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Removes Writer’s Stories Over Possible Plagiarism

Last week, the New York Press got rid of its newly minted sex columnist after it was revealed that Claudia Lonow took the questions for her first column from old "Savage Love" columns. But Savage tells the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that he feels bad for Lonow, and that he thinks the "borrowing was an accident." In an interview with KING5-TV, the syndicated columnist and editor of The Stranger says that if Lonow would have just sourced the questions properly, there would've been no problem. "She just thought they were good hypotheticals and thought she could use them with impunity, and that's kinda not the way the media business works anymore," he says. Meanwhile, the Press is holding an open competition to become the paper's new sex columnist. Each week, the paper's editors will select one piece for publication, and those winners will become finalists in the quest. The new column will launch in the paper's 20th anniversary issue on April 23.

Continue ReadingDan Savage: Sex Column Flap ‘Doesn’t Rise to the Level of Plagiarism’

The paper and its crosstown rival the Seattle Weekly are giving competing explanations for the review's disappearance. The restaurant's co-owner tells the Weekly that The Stranger agreed to give him "a deal" on advertising and take the story off the website after he complained about the review when it ran in the Jan. 3 print edition. But Stranger publisher Tim Keck says the review wasn't fair, and a note on the Stranger's website says the review was taken down because the restaurant was visited within the first three months of its opening, which is against the paper's editorial policy. Keck tells the Weekly that the restaurant was given free ads, but it wasn't part of a deal to quiet the owner, but rather due to "production errors" in earlier ads the restaurant had run.

Continue ReadingWhy Did The Stranger Pull Negative Restaurant Review from Website?