An article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal by reporter Yochi J. Dreazen about a "turf war" between adult-kickball leagues in Washington, D.C., bears a resemblance to a May 2005 City Paper article by Dave McKenna about the same subject. There are enough similarities for McKenna to tell Media Mob that he "feel[s] flattered" because "thievery is the sincerest form of flattery." He concludes: "In the end, it's just about kickball."
With retail outlets down and competition up, the Capital's alt-weekly has turned to street hawkers to help it get the paper into readers' hands, reports the Washington Post. While the District's free commuter dailies employ hawkers during morning rush hours, the City Paper crew hit the streets Thursday afternoon, to target readers leaving work during "happy hour," says publisher Amy Austin.
Trey Graham, a City Paper theater critic since 1995, is the winner of the 2003-04 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. The awards committee -- composed of the chairs of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton, and Yale, among other experts -- commended Graham for writing "with sensitivity and flair about the individual masterworks of the British and American canon," calling him "adept at linking these and other works from the past with the best the present has to offer." Past winners of the award include Walter Kerr and Hilton Als.
Interviewed by the Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk, Washington City Paper editor Erik Wemple says the reports of his profession's death are greatly exaggerated. "I just am not buying into this journalistic apocalypse," he says. He thinks a lot of papers, including the one he edits, serve their communities well. Turning a critical eye on alt-weeklies, Wemple cites predictability as the root of "whatever malaise might exist" in the industry. "Alt-weeklies do descend from a certain tradition where it's no surprise that the editorial is slamming Bush or supporting Kerry or Nader," he says.
Noticing that The Washington Times hadn't run a single correction in nine days, City Paper editor Erik Wemple decided to provide that service in his own pages. Wrong name, wrong block, wrong date of crime: Such errors will be duly noted and corrected in the alt-weekly. City Paper will "manage this critical function," Wemple writes, because the Times "lacks the resources to run its own corrections."
When the free weekday tabloid Express debuted Monday morning, the City Paper and its band of merry pranksters were prepared, hawking 10,000 copies of its own Expresso at subway stops across the nation's capital. The City Paper parodists, led by Webmeister Dave Nuttycombe, "anticipated the journalistic emptiness of Express," according to Slate's Jack Shafer, who says the Post's new lite version "ladles the news out with an eyedropper into tiny text boxes and then flattens it with a steamroller." Also revealed: The editor of Express is none other than Dan Caccavaro, former editor of AAN-member Valley Advocate.
Washington City Paper leads the field with six nominations in the eighth annual awards contest, followed by the Dallas Observer with five. Among individual contestants, Thomas Francis of Cleveland Scene and Heather Swaim of OC Weekly are nominated twice. The order of finish in the contest will be announced June 6 at the AAN Convention.
Long-time General Manager Amy Austin was promoted to publisher of D.C.'s alt-weekly, taking over from Thomas Yoder, who also has responsibilities in Chicago with CP's sister paper. "I think we've gotten to the point now where this is just a mature, strong paper with not only a great person in Amy, but a good management staff under Amy," COO Jane Levine tells the Washington Business Journal.
