Lawyers and economists from the U.S. Justice Department are investigating if the Cleveland Free Times can "be a viable business in the current media climate" in the city, according to the Plain Dealer. The Free Times was closed in 2002 when its owner, Village Voice Media, agreed to shutter it, giving Cleveland's other alt-weekly, the New Times-owned Scene, a monopoly. (The two parent companies merged in 2005.) The Justice Dept. investigated that deal and forced the sale of Free Times to a group of investors. Former Free Times editor David Eden tells the Plain Dealer he was recently questioned by lawyers from Justice about whether or not he thought the paper could be turned around. He says he told them that Cleveland needs the paper's independent voice and he hopes it is sold to a local group rather than being bought out by the competition and closed. "It feels like deja vu all over again," he says.
That seems to be the opinion of Ed Avis, who looks at the challenges alt-weekly owners are facing in a piece for Quill, a magazine published by the Society for Professional Journalists. Not surprisingly, he says the biggest challenge to the business is the internet. He talks to the Austin Chronicle's Louis Black, Creative Loafing's Ben Eason, and Times Shamrock's Don Farley to see where they are at in relation to the internet, and, more importantly, where they're trying to go. Ultimately, Avis thinks that the challenge of the online market -- in concert with the aging of the original alt-weekly founders -- is what's behind the industry's increased consolidation. Northwestern University professor and Academy for Alternative Journalism director Charles Whitaker agrees. "I think the (older owners) have had difficulty adjusting and figuring out the new media landscape, particularly the internet and things like Craigslist," he says. "At the same time, a group of new owners said, 'We can do this as a chain. We still have our alternative press sensibilities, but by pooling our resources we can run these papers more efficiently than they had been run in the past.'"
In 1987, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, who started Phoenix New Times in 1970 and bought Denver's Westword in 1983, "bought a South Beach rag named The Wave for $50 and a hot dog with plenty of relish," and Miami New Times was born, managing editor Chuck Strouse writes as the paper celebrates its 20th anniversary. "Miami is a city that reinvents itself every few years," he writes. "Indeed between the time I left town in 2000 to edit New Times Broward-Palm Beach and my return two years ago, the place went from cultural wasteland to visual arts mecca. Miami New Times, though, has become a constant -- brassy, iconoclastic, and, well, sometimes tasteless."
The ACLU of Michigan filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit today on behalf of Metro Times, three political parties, and a political consulting firm, to overturn a law that enables only the Democratic and Republican parties to obtain lists of people who will vote on Tuesday's presidential primary, the Detroit Free Press reports. The law, passed last August, doesn't require voters to register by party, so the ACLU is arguing that the party in which residents will cast votes is valuable to political parties, candidates, journalists and citizen groups.
The First Amendment provides no guarantee that witnesses should be able to see every step of an execution in Arkansas, a federal judge ruled as she dismissed a lawsuit by the Arkansas Times and local chapters of the ACLU and the Society for Professional Journalists, the AP reports. The suit sought to allow journalists to witness the prisoner as (s)he is led to the execution chamber, strapped down, and inserted with IVs. In her ruling, the judge wrote that executions have "moved from the public square to inside prison walls," an area where the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled reporters have no special right to access. "Even if constitutionally we don't have a right to be there at every step of that process, public accountability demands that we should be," Times editor Max Brantley says, adding that he and the other parties would confer with lawyers before deciding whether to appeal the ruling.
"Marya Summers is tired of hanging out in nightclubs, so she's quitting her job," South Florida Media Jobs reports. The New Times Broward-Palm Beach nightlife columnist is leaving to pursue an MFA in creative nonfiction. In this Q&A, she dispenses the notion that writing about nightlife is easy. "Most people are self-deceiving when it comes to who they are, so my column comes as a slap in the face," she says. "I've lost friends." Asked to give advice to the intrepid columnist who might want to replace her, Summers gets right to the point: "An expense account for a nightlife columnist is just incentive to drive drunk. Negotiate more pay instead of reimbursed expenses."
In October, as the New Times grand-jury probe fiasco bubbled to the surface, reporter Ray Stern was given a criminal citation for disorderly conduct after an argument over taking photos of public records at the sheriff's office. Stern said Monday that a Phoenix prosecutor offered him a fine of $100 or attending anger management classes in exchange for a guilty plea, the Associated Press reports. "I'm not going to (plead guilty)," he says. "I know I wasn't yelling."
The paper has dropped its lawsuit asking a federal judge to declare the law that makes it a crime to publish the addresses of certain people on the internet unconstitutional, the Arizona Business Gazette reports. The statute was the one that began the recent grand-jury investigation of New Times and the arrests and controversy that followed. Since the threat of prosecution against the paper had been dropped, "it made no sense to tilt at windmills," Village Voice Media executive editor Michael Lacey tells the Gazette. However, since the case was dismissed "without prejudice," the paper could reinstate its case if there is any subsequent investigation. Lacey says he would hope all the publicity surrounding the case would convince the county attorney not to try to enforce that law against New Times or any other publication.
In the editorial of E&P's latest issue, the magazine rails against the "Soviet-style arrests" of Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin in the Phoenix New Times grand-jury subpoena fiasco and the "lavish waste of public funds" used by the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation to investigate and ultimately arrest Orlando Weekly employees for "aiding and abetting prostitution." E&P commends the local mainstream dailies in Phoenix and Orlando for sticking up for the alt-weeklies in these two cases. "But dailies too rarely make common cause with their local alt-weekly when they are targeted by the familiar harassments of police ad stings, library banishments, and 'litter' laws concerned more about free papers stacked in a store than candy wrappers on the sidewalk," the magazine says. "Usually that's because the mainstream paper's top people resent the snarky coverage they get from the alternative with its sneering cheap shots. But thuggish local authorities who believe they can act with impunity against alt-papers will soon wonder just how much they can get away with against the mainstream daily."
- Go to the previous page
- 1
- …
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- …
- 68
- Go to the next page
