With taxes on the minds of most Americans, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) member papers are doing what they do best: providing an antidote to the myths that the mainstream media, local television news and politicians perpetuate about tax policy.
Willamette Week managing news editor Hank Stern is leaving the paper to take a communications job with Multnomah County.
Willamette Week recently launched its new and much-improved website, debuting a far more user-friendly face for local and national readers.
Lukas Ketner -- whose Barack Obama illustration graced the cover of Willamette Week's 2008 endorsement issue -- says in the New York Times that he received "a lot of mileage" out of the cover, eventually leading to the launch of a comic book, 'Witch Doctor,' which will be released during this week's Comic-Con.
During a press conference held by the family of a missing Oregon boy, Willamette Week reporter James Pitkin -- who had earlier reported on the family's troubled history -- was asked to leave for failing to be a "team player." A reporter for the local daily, The Oregonian, was also escorted out. As Pitkin noted, the end result was that the two largest papers in Oregon had essentially been sidelined because the family didn't approve of the negative coverage.
The Society of Professional Journalists' Pacific Northwest Excellence in Journalism competition, unlike many others, features its own alt-weekly division, which pits publications from Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and Montana against each other. This year, the Pacific Northwest Inlander led the pack with 13 total awards -- six of which were first-place finishes. Five of the Willamette Week's nine total awards were in first place, and Seattle Weekly won 13 total awards and three firsts. The Missoula Independent won five awards, with two first-place wins. The Eugene Weekly won five awards and the Portland Mercury won one.
Westword's Patricia Calhoun took home a first place win and Willamette Week's Beth Slovic received a special citation at the Education Writers Association's 2009 National Awards for Education Reporting. Calhoun took first in the Small Media: Opinion category for "School Daze," while Slovic was recognized in the Small Media: Feature, News Feature or Issue Package category for "Cheerless."
Music writers and editors at the Nashville Scene and Willamette Week have put together compilation albums of their respective local scenes as part of LimeWire's "Ear to the Ground" series. "There's lots of talk these days about localism being dead, but these kinds of collections remind listeners that geography still has a lot to do with an artists' sounds and aesthetics," WW music editor Casey Jarman says. "Ear to the Ground compilations are fantastic primers, and we think this is a pretty amazing primer for Portland music." Nashville Scene music editor Steve Haruch adds: "Any time we have a chance to get the word out to a wider audience about what's going on here, we jump at it." These two papers join fellow alts like Boston's Weekly Dig, Flagpole, Metro Times, and Philadelphia City Paper, all of which have previously curated discs for LimeWire. (The free digital downloads are all available here.)
"In 1974, the first WW rolled off the presses into a town in transition, between listless backwater and budding progressive mecca," Mark Zusman and Ethan Smith write in an intro to a special commemorative issue that features nearly 20 stories on the paper's -- and Portland's -- journey since then. As part of the paper's anniversary celebration, it has also curated an art show devoted to trashing its covers.
Small Society, the company whose work on iPhone applications for the Obama campaign, Whole Foods and Zipcar has earned wide recognition and praise in the growing app development field, is partnering with Pre1 Software and the parent company of Willamette Week and Santa Fe Reporter to develop an iPhone publishing platform which they hope to make available to AAN publishers by late 2009. "We think this may be the killer app for alt weeklies," Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman says.
