Husband-and-wife team Bingo and Sally Barnes are the new owner/operators of Boise Weekly. The sale by City of Roses Newspaper Company was official on August 1 and formally inked on August 2. Present and former owners all agree the paper needs the kind of local stewardship the Barnes say they’ll provide.
• Read the Idaho Statesman's story on the sale.
In its summer issue, Columbia Journalism Review tenders "laurels" to three AAN members – The Village Voice, the Nashville Scene, and Tampa’s Weekly Planet – for “good old-fashioned criticism of the big boys in town.” The journalism-mag crowns the beneficiaries with a left-handed compliment: “Who says the alternative press has sold its birthright for a mess of personal ads and restaurant reviews?”
Norah Vincent, a lesbian columnist for The Village Voice and other publications, seriously ticks off much of the gay and lesbian community, The New York Times reports. Vincent, whose views are way right of center, says many in the gay community “dislike anyone they see as disagreeing with them.” Voice Editor Don Forst defends his decision to run her column: “She gets people to read her. And if she introduces thoughts that they haven't had, that's terrific."
When the Nashville Scene ran a five-part series skewering the Tennessean, the local daily countered with a string of full-page, color ads belittling the circulation figures of its alt-weekly competitor. Tennessean Publisher Craig Moon tells AJR that the Scene's take-out had nothing to do with his decision to run the ads. The Scene published its own ads in response and Editor/ Publisher Bruce Dobie warns darkly: "Never pick on someone smaller than you."
Atlantic Monthly wannabe Joe Sullivan bought Metro Pulse and helped make founding publisher Rand Pearson's vision of an alternative weekly in Knoxville, Tenn. a reality. Although he's "acutely conscious of (the paper's) shortcomings" and the economy hasn't been much help lately, Sullivan thanks the people who have helped him make Metro Pulse into a paper that is contributing to its community.
