The Missoula Independent has hired alt-weekly veteran Brad Tyer as its new editor. Tyer, a native of Houston, takes over from Interim Editor David Madison, who will become the paper’s Flathead Bureau Chief in Kalispell, Mont. Tyer was previously editor of the Texas Observer and before that a staff reporter at the Houston Press.
"Queer and Present Danger" by Ken Picard is among the finalists for Best Newspaper Article in the 14th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. "Diverse media images continue to display the broad spectrum of our lives and stories, and this year's Media Awards nominees testify once again to the culture-changing power of those images," said Joan M. Garry, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in announcing the nominations.
The New Island Ear will change from a biweekly music and lifestyle newspaper to a news and entertainment weekly, doubling its free circulation and aiming to reach older, 25- to 49-year-old, Long Islanders, Newsday reports. The Morey Organization, which purchased the Ear earlier this year, plans to launch the Long Island Press Jan. 16 in Nassau, Suffolk and Queens counties.
Mark Rey, former timber lobbyist, is "truly feared" by environmentalists in his new job as steward of the nation's dwindling wilderness, Andy Ryan reports in Seattle Weekly. "He never met a tree he wouldn't cut," Bill Arthur, director of the Sierra Club's Northwest office in Seattle, tells Ryan. "The timber executives ponied up a million dollars for Bush's election campaign, and Mark Rey intends to make sure their investment is richly rewarded." Nevertheless, some Northwestern enviros are talking about making a deal with the devil: sacrificing younger trees to save old growth forest.
Andy Sutcliffe and Janet Reynolds have been named group publishers for New Mass Media's four alternative newsweeklies. At the first of 2003, Reynolds becomes group publisher for the Valley and Hartford Advocates, while Sutcliffe takes the same title at the New Haven Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly. "These appointments further assist in the re-organization of New Mass. Media, Inc. into a more streamlined and efficient publishing house," says CEO Fran Zankowski.
