"How many sitting Congressmen could get away with boycotting a hometown newspaper for more than three years -- refusing to be interviewed on any topic -- and never face an ounce of criticism?" asks Salt Lake City Weekly editor Holly Mullen. "Rep. Jim Matheson has, and it's time to call him out." She says Matheson hasn't spoken to the paper since August 2005, and attributes the stonewalling in part to coverage of Matheson's brother when he was running for governor in 2004. "The oddest thing about Matheson's tiff with the SLWeekly is that it seems so unnecessary," notes the Salt Lake Tribune's Glen Warchol. "As the highest ranking Utah Democrat, Matheson should be able to find some common ground with a 'progressive' newspaper in the heart of blue Salt Lake City." More from Politico.
Three alt-weeklies have recently cut back in freelancer-generated content areas. SF Weekly theater reviewer Chloe Veltman writes that the paper's weekly Stage setion "will drop from three plays -- my 1,000-word column plus two 200-word capsule reviews -- to just my column." Over at sister paper the Nashville Scene, books contributor Maria Browning says on her blog that the book page has been eliminated from that paper altogether. And up in Massachusetts, Worcester Magazine will stop running the local bi-weekly comic "Action Geek."
As part of company-wide cuts at Creative Loafing, Washington City Paper and Creative Loafing (Charlotte) have each reportedly laid off two employees. In addition, Mediabistro is reporting on an unspecified number of layoffs at L.A. Weekly, and the Valley Advocate says that last week associate publisher Do-Han Allen and circulation manager Jeffrey Owczarski became "the latest casualties of a series of year-end layoffs by our parent company." A few days after his paper laid off seven, Creative Loafing (Tampa) editor David Warner dedicates his editor's note to a list of "the Top 10 Reasons Layoffs Suck."
"After a year in which we had the most employees on staff in the paper's history -- 35 -- last week the Indy laid off two people, a reporter and the promotions coordinator, as well as reduced our freelance budget by 10 percent," Lisa Sorg writes in her editor's note this week. Sorg tells local blog Bull City Rising that the laid off employees are Vernal Coleman and Marny Rhodes, and that she and a number of other managers are taking voluntary pay cuts.
Rand Carlson, whose cartoons have appeared in the Weekly for more than 20 years, talks to local TV station KVOA about why he loves his job. "It's like one constant joke after another," he says. "I keep experimenting, I keep twisting words around, seeing pictures in my head about what to make fun of."
In a story about the media industry's woes in the Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon's student paper, the Weekly's director of sales and marketing Bill Shreve says the poor national economy seems to have only recently began to catch up to the Eugene economy. He tells the Emerald that "retail is off a little bit" in the last month, and that while the Weekly hasn't been hit as hard as some other media outlets, the staff is "extremely cautious."
At the paper's regular Friday meeting, Sally Freeman asked the staff to take a 10 percent cut in pay through the end of March to help ward off damage done by weak ad sales. "After the quick announcement, Freeman cried a little and then offered to meet with each of her workers individually," Weekly editor Nathaniel Hoffman reports. Freeman tells Hoffman that the paper's annual revenue is down 4 percent compared to 2007, and it came in $90,000 below budget in the last six to seven weeks.
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