Weekly

Mehdi Shahbazi, a gas-station owner who posts signs accusing big oil companies of price-gouging, has been the subject of three articles by Raul Vasquez in Monterey County Weekly (Nov. 3, Jan. 26, May 4). However, that publicity probably did not prepare him for having his face run alongside Jennifer Aniston's on the AOL News homepage on Friday (screenshot below). Visitors to the site were invited to read Vasquez's stories and vote on whether Shahbazi or Aniston was having the "worst week ever." Aniston won the vote, but Shahbazi can take comfort in the fact that AOL calls him "a hero" who "doesn't suck."

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Continue ReadingMonterey County Weekly Story Picked Up For AOL’s ‘Worst Week Ever’ Poll

Margie Robinson-Jeter died May 26, according to an obituary published this weekend in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Robinson-Jeter, 41, was hospitalized two weeks ago after suffering "cardiac arrest," according to an e-mail sent to AAN by Style Weekly Publisher Jim Wark. Memorial services for Robinson-Jeter were held this afternoon.

Continue ReadingStyle Weekly Classified Director Passes Away

Tampa's alt-weekly was formerly called Creative Loafing, and it will be called that again this fall, according to Editor David Warner. But a "universal brain fart'" led the paper to mistakenly make the change several months ahead of schedule and run its latest issue under the nameplate of its sister publications in Charlotte and Atlanta. "The error was partly due to the fact that while the editing staffs for Tampa and Sarasota are in Florida, design and production for all four papers in the Creative Loafing chain is done in Atlanta," Warner wrote last week on his paper's blog. "But such an error has never occurred before, and we here in Tampa should have been more alert."

Continue ReadingWeekly Planet Changes Name, Prematurely

John Yarmuth captured 54 percent of the vote and will face Republican incumbent Anne Northup for Kentucky's 3rd District seat in the fall, The Courier-Journal reports. Yarmuth sold the Louisville Eccentric Observer in 2003, but he continued writing a political column for the weekly until he announced his candidacy in January. Northup's campaign chairman called Yarmuth's victory "very underwhelming" and said that Yarmuth "may represent the majority view of that offbeat newspaper of his, The LEO, but it is a certain fact he doesn't represent the majority view of the voters in Jefferson County." Yarmuth, in his victory speech, said that he "welcome[s] a contest which pits [Northup's] perspective on the way the world works and mine."

Continue ReadingLEO Founder Wins Primary for House of Representatives Seat

Former Gambit Weekly Editor Michael Tisserand won first place in the Individual Feature Writing Category of the 2005 Louisiana Press Association journalism competition, the LPA announced this weekend. Tisserand won for an entry from his "Submerged" series that also ran as a cover story for Lafayette's Independent Weekly, which competes in the Free Circulation/Special Interest Publication category against other weeklies in the state. Tisserand's ten-part series chronicling the Katrina-evacuee experience was commissioned by AAN and ran in dozens of AAN member papers and Web sites. The Independent, a three-year old publication applying for AAN membership this year, earned 50 awards in the competition, including 21 first-place honors. Gannett's competing weekly in Lafayette, the Times of Acadiana, picked up 27 awards.

Continue ReadingArticle from ‘Submerged’ Series Wins Press Association Contest

Jeff Lawrence (pictured) could care less that some law enforcement officials think escort ads are a front for prostitution. According to a recent piece in E&P, the president of Boston's Weekly Dig decided to remove the ads from his paper because he thought they were attracting too many 50-year-old white male suburbanites. "It's no different than if we started running ads for Geritol or Depends adult diapers," Lawrence tells E&P. "In terms of attracting readers, content is one thing, but the advertisements, too, are huge part of determining whether your readers are going to respond to your paper." Lawrence says the Dig also is considering whether to drop a couple of other categories that may not belong in the paper. "Advertisers like that you're protecting your demographic," he says, "They say, 'You're willing to give up revenue to stay on mission -- that's fantastic.'"

Continue ReadingDecision to Dump Escort Ads About Demographics, Not Morals, Says Dig