A recent survey of AAN papers revealed that the applications alt-weeklies are using to track circulation are as diverse as the newspapers themselves. A few papers rely on their in-house wiz for a custom-made program, but for the rest of the industry, a commercial package is the only sophisticated option. Alt-weekly circulation insiders describe their woes, successes, and dreams of better uses for the numbers.
In a blog post dated Feb. 28, Rall announced that he had raised $21,000 toward legal fees for a potential slander lawsuit against Ann Coulter. In February, Coulter said in a speech and a later column that "in response to the Muhammad cartoons, one Iranian newspaper is soliciting cartoons about the Holocaust. (So far the only submissions have come from Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau and The New York Times.)" Rall wrote in a syndicated column that he had received e-mails calling him "an anti-Semite and anti-American traitor."
According to The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., two brothers have been arrested in a series of 29 burglaries, including 12 at area churches and one at the Eugene Weekly. Editor Ted Taylor tells AAN that the burglars smashed the front door and a cash register during the December break-in, but only made off with change from a charity donation jar. "Jerry, the old homeless guy who camps in our carport every night, wasn't very useful -- he slept through the whole thing," Taylor reports. He also notes that the newspaper has "an ongoing campaign going against our local cops over excessive force and selective enforcement, but they showed up anyway and were very professional."
As Editor in Chief of L.A. Weekly, Laurie Ochoa tries to find innovative approaches to special issues, so that "you don't feel like you're reading the same copy over and over again." Viewing the "Best of L.A." through a theme of the seven deadly sins won Ochoa and her staff a first-place AtlWeekly Award for Special Section. This is the 38th and final in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Anyone "familiar with the alternative newspaper industry in Pittsburgh would have seen failure coming" at the Madison, Wis. faux-alt, argues Indiana University of Pennsylvania student Emily Jo Boots in the school newspaper. According to Boots, the Core Weekly train wreck was foreseeable because the paper was the brainchild of Catherine Nelson, the same publisher who oversaw the demise of both In Pittsburgh and Pulp in the Steel City. "It sounds to me like Nelson thinks that dumbing down a newspaper will make everyone want to read it," Boots writes after summarizing Core Weekly's business plan. "It seems that Nelson didn’t learn a thing when her business philosophy as a publishing consultant ran Pulp into the ground."
Originally published in 2004 as a one-time spoof, Gustavo Arellano's "Ask a Mexican" has taken on a life of its own, landing the 27-year-old reporter and editor a regular gig on a right-wing talk radio show as well as the front page of today's Los Angeles Times. In his weekly column, Arellano answers the kind of frank questions about Mexican stereotypes (e.g., "Why do Mexicans put on their Sunday best to shop at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc.?") that aren't normally asked in polite society. According to the Times, he gets away with it because his writing is "historically and culturally accurate" and "imbued with affection for Mexican immigrants." But not everyone is thrilled. OC Weekly Editor Will Swaim tells the Times he still fields the occasional call or e-mail demanding that Arellano be fired.
Eight of the prospective members are previous applicants, and two are owned by alt-weekly veterans who had been members during a previous association with different papers. AAN members will also be asked this year to evaluate Boston's Weekly Dig and Des Moines' Cityview, the first two post-sale newspapers whose membership will be reviewed under a process established in 2004 when the association's bylaws were amended. The fate of all of these papers will be determined at the organization's next Annual Meeting, which will be held in Little Rock on Saturday, June 17, the last day of the 29th annual AAN convention.
Leon speaks freely in a vitriolic interview with SFist, a blog that covered SF Weekly's termination of his regular "Infiltrator" column. Leon blames Editor Tom Walsh for the two misleading columns that got him in trouble and says, "Tom Walsh is the worst editor I've ever worked for. The reason I say this, an editor's job is to make a writer look good, not to make people question a writer's credibility." Nevertheless, Leon claims that he is "not bitter about the whole thing" because he "enjoyed working with John Mecklin" and is "happy with the body of work" he produced.
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