Twelve newspapers have applied for membership in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies this year, and the status of five current member papers will be reviewed. Those issues and other association business will be addressed at the organization’s next Annual Meeting, which will be held in Philadelphia on Saturday, June 7, the last day of the annual AAN convention.
AAN members will see some familiar names among the applicants. Half of the papers applied for membership last year: Cascadia Weekly (Bellingham, Wash.), City Pulse (Lansing, Mich.), Fast Forward Weekly (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Hawai’i Island Journal (Hilo, Hawaii), See Magazine (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), and Yes! Weekly (Greensboro, N.C.). In addition, Las Vegas CityLife applied for membership in 2006.
There are other familiar faces in this year’s crop of applicants. Inland Empire Weekly, which is owned by Southland Publishing (the parent company of AAN members Los Angeles CityBeat, Pasadena Weekly, San Diego CityBeat, and the Ventura County Reporter) is run by veterans of L.A. Weekly and OC Weekly. The Rocky Mountain Chronicle was created out of the ashes of former AAN member the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn in Oct. 2006 and is edited by former AAN editorial committee member and Colorado Springs Independent editor Vanessa Martinez.
AAN will produce reports on each applying paper, detailing the business history and backgrounds of their current ownerships. When the reports are complete they will be posted in the members-only area of AAN.org.
The AAN Membership Committee will review the newspapers and their applications over the next several months and will discuss their findings when the committee meets in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, May 3.
Following its meeting, the committee will issue its recommendations regarding each application prior to the Annual Meeting. The 12 applying papers must be approved by two-thirds of the members voting at the meeting in order to join AAN.
These are the 12 newspapers that have applied for AAN membership this year:
- Cascadia Weekly (Bellingham, Wash.; cascadiaweekly.com)
- City Pulse (Lansing, Mich.; lansingcitypulse.com)
- Columbia City Paper (Columbia, S.C.; columbiacitypaper.com)
- Fast Forward Weekly (Calgary, Alberta, Canada; ffwdweekly.com)
- Hawai’i Island Journal (Hilo, Hawaii; hawaiiislandjournal.com)
- Inland Empire Weekly (Corona, Calif.; ieweekly.com)
- Las Vegas CityLife (Las Vegas, Nev.; lasvegascitylife.com)
- Mercury (Newport, R.I.; newportmercury.com)
- Rocky Mountain Chronicle (Fort Collins, Colo.; rmchronicle.com)
- See Magazine (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; seemagazine.com)
- The Weekender (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; theweekender.com)
- Yes! Weekly (Greensboro, N.C.; yesweekly.com)
The current members whose membership status will be reviewed in 2008 are The Other Paper (Columbus, Ohio), Boston’s Weekly Dig, East Bay Express (Emeryville, Calif.), Metro Pulse (Knoxville, Tenn.), and Cityview (Des Moines, Iowa). For more on the membership review process, see “Membership of Five Papers Up for Review in 2008,” published in Dec. 2007 on AAN.org.
