Richard Meeker, who has served as publisher for the past 32 years, is turning over the reins to longtime business partner and editor Mark Zusman.
In a world full of mosquito-sized attention spans, alt-weeklies have always been a home for quality longform journalism. For us, longform is more than just a hashtag, it's at the core of who we are.
At Arizona State's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman shared wisdom gained in the trenches of alternative journalism.
The Independent Weekly (Durham, N.C.) and its associated website, indyweek.com, are being sold to Richard Meeker and Mark Zusman. Meeker and Zusman are the owners of City of Roses Newspaper Company which publishes Willamette Week and the Santa Fe Reporter.
Portland's Willamette Week has been featured in "Who Needs Newspapers?" - a national project produced by the non-profit organization Valid Sources.
At the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies annual meeting on Saturday, July 23 in New Orleans, members voted unanimously to change the organization's name to Association of Alternative Newsmedia. The association also elected Colorado Springs Independent CEO Fran Zankowski as President and admitted its first online-only publication: The American Independent News Network.
Traffic to David Cay Johnston's piece on tax myths, which ran in 40 alt-weeklies last week, caused Willamette Week's website to crash for about three hours Monday.
Brent Walth, who shared in a Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting while at The Oregonian, has been named Willamette Week's news editor. He replaces Hank Stern, who is leaving the paper to work for the county.
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.
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.
