Costs have been cut. Page count is down. Morale could be better. How do we do more than survive? This is the focus of the annual convention in Toronto. The shakeup of the past two years has, in many ways, given alt-weeklies the chance of a lifetime -- an opportunity for rebirth and reinvention. This July, in one of the most beautiful cities in North America, industry leaders, big-picture thinkers and plenty of your smart peers will be explaining how to create a blueprint for financial success. You'll learn how to focus and rededicate your company to thrive for the next decades and longer.
The California Court of Appeal heard oral arguments Friday in the SF Weekly/San Francisco Bay Guardian predatory-pricing case. The Weekly is asking the court to throw out the multi-million damage award the jury gave the Guardian in the case. A ruling is due from the appeals court within 90 days, and both sides have reportedly said they will ask the California Supreme Court to review the case if they lose at this level. The San Francisco Chronicle covered the hearing, as did both the Guardian and the Weekly.
"Over the last couple of years, Honolulu Weekly has largely abandoned our old habit of taking potshots at the larger papers," editor Ragnar Carlson wrote last week. "We have simply felt that this was not the time to be nit-picking the Advertiser [which ceased publication on June 6], not with a dwindling staff of committed journalists struggling to keep it afloat." While noting that "there is a definite role for media criticism in this community," Carlson says the decision to not attack the daly is "one I feel good about."
The Society of Professional Journalists announced the winners of its 2010 Sunshine State Awards earlier this month. Miami New Times won seven awards, including six first-place wins -- in the Light Feature Reporting, Religion Reporting, Medical/Health Care/Science Reporting, Serious Feature Reporting, Food/Beverage Writing and International Reporting categories. Creative Loafing won five awards, including a first-place finish in the Criticism category
A Weekly photographer who was shooting on the public sidewalk outside a FBI building was confronted with a security guard and four federal agents when he was taking pictures for the paper's cover story this week. "It became pretty stressful -- they weren't interfering with the shoot by blocking us, but they kept asking us questions and at a certain point I said 'Well, I feel pretty intimidated, I think we're done here,'" Steven Miller says.
This week the paper debuted its drastically redesigned print publication and also rolled out changes to its website. Editor-in-chief Mara Shalhoup says the process began about nine months ago, with questions like "What if we turned the paper into the type of publication that existed only in our imaginations?" and "What was to stop us from rethinking ... everything?" The print overhaul was led by newspaper designer/art director Ron Reason, who goes into detail about the process and the thinking behind a number of decisions in a blog post.
By now, most publishers have come to terms with the basics of search engine optimization, but don't get too comfortable. Mike Volpe, from web marketing company HubSpot, will be in Toronto to explain the changes to the way in which search engines work. Volpe will give conventioneers tips on how to adapt and optimize your website in order to remain competitive in the future.
As an example, he says, SEO is becoming more time-sensitive and more personal. Google's new search index, Caffeine, just announced this week, will use more "real-time" results, which means that timely news and blog posts, as well as social media status updates, will become increasingly important to maintaining high search visibility. In addition, Volpe says search engines are beginning to use your physical location and search history more, and will eventually move into social search, which adds what your connections like and use to the mix. Many of these developments could bode well for alt-weeklies, which have strong content based around a locality and often have robust social communities. But that won't do you much good if you are falling on the second or third search pages. After Volpe's talk, you should be ready to make changes to your site that will prepare you for the future of SEO.
Current Westword web editor Joe Tone has been named the next editor of The Pitch. He will take over for C.J. Janovy, who is moving on to a communications job at the University of Kansas Medical Center. "I'm just thrilled about getting to Kansas City and getting to work," says Tone, who has also served as the managing editor at Cleveland Scene. "The city is obviously brimming with great stories, and The Pitch newsroom is well armed to tell them. Filling those ass-kicking boots of C.J.'s is going to be no small feat, but I'm looking forward to trying."
On MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbernmann Monday night, the host named South Carolina Sen. Jake Knott June 7's "Worst Person in the World," mostly based on a Columbia Free Times piece on how Knott had called an Indian-American gubernatorial candidate "a raghead that's ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons."
AIDS Walk Boston, which took place last weekend, turned 25 this year, and to mark the milestone, walk organizer AIDS Action honored 25 individuals whose contributions to the fight against AIDS have been invaluable. Phoenix publisher Bradley Mindich was one of them. He was lauded for his decision to distribute safer sex kit in every issue of the paper in 1987, as well as the Phoenix's long association with the AIDS Walk. After distributing the kit, Mindich was called a "murderer" in the pages of the Boston Herald and Boston Archdiocese newspaper The Pilot for making birth control freely available, according to AIDS Action.
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