Match.com and People2People/Tele-Publishing International, two of the biggest operators in online and voice personals, are coming together to offer users "a robust pool of potential dates and romantic partners," the two companies announced in a joint news release today. P2P/TPI, owned by Phoenix Media Communications Group, is the largest provider of voice personals. Match.com is a global provider of Internet personals. The two together will now have more than 1,000 media clients and reach millions of singles searching for romance.
AAN member papers report that once again classified advertising sales, especially real estate and rental, are keeping overall revenues steady. At the two alternative newsweekly industry national ad sales networks, AWN and Ruxton, sales are running well ahead of last year’s first quarter, but that was one of the worst quarters on record for the industry. “Normally I’d be excited about 20 percent growth,†Michele Laven, president and COO of New Times’ Ruxton Group tells AAN News. “We have a long way to go.â€
Expatriate Iraqis talk with Baltimore City Paper's Tom Chalkley about life under -- and after -- Saddam Hussein, about fear, torture, repression and eventually flight. Now they express the fears of many that Saddam is still alive and plotting return to power. "Even if you find his body, you still don't know," one expat Iraqi tells Chalkley. "Even if I killed him with my own hands, I wouldn't know if he's dead or not."
Caryn Brooks, arts and culture editor at Willamette Week, has been named one of seven 2003-04 fellows of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. "In addition to pursuing coursework and other activities at Columbia, the fellows will participate jointly in a research project designed to inform news organizations, arts institutions and philanthropic organizations about important trends in the current U.S. artistic and journalistic environment," the program's release states.
Jann Wenner and Mortimer Zuckerman want it. So do the Tribune Co. and the New York Times. "It" is New York magazine, which is perhaps coveted less for potential profits than for its media-historical cachet. Founded in 1968 by Clay Felker, who also owned and edited The Village Voice, New York's sharp take on the cultural and political life of the city and its hip version of service journalism invented the city magazine and had a profound influence on the development of the alternative newspaper. "For five or six years, Clay Felker's version of New York magazine did something revolutionary," New York Observer Editor Peter Kaplan tells The New York Times' David Carr. "It not only invented the city magazine, it restated the city around it. And that is a great thing."
Marnye Oppenheim, who wrote the "Bite Me" restaurant column for New Times Los Angeles for two years and continued it at Phoenix New Times, has died, the LA Times reports. She was 32.
Last week, DNA evidence led to an exoneration hearing for Ryan Matthews, who had been convicted of the 1997 killing of a Bridge City, La., grocer. For one man, the news means hope. For another, re-opening the wound of his father's death is agony. Gambit Weekly's Katy Reckdahl looks at all sides of this story of miscarried justice.
