On May 6, the Salem Monthly, a six-year-old alternative newspaper in Oregon's state capital, will become the Salem Weekly and be distributed every other Thursday.
The Spokane, Wash., alt-weekly has re-launched its website, Inlander.com. The redesign features faster load times, online archives stretching back 10 years, a regularly updated, all-in-one blog (a la The Stranger's Slog) and, crucially, a searchable, sortable, shareable entertainment listing system. The redesign was made possible through months of work with Wisconsin-based WeHaa, a web-publishing company that is also currently working with the Santa Fe Reporter, Ohio's Athens News and Birmingham Weekly. "My major goal was to really give The Inlander the dream site ... [to] give them the best tools to grab the online market," says Cesar Montes, president of WeHaa. "We keep growing and growing and growing, because we are [always] open to hearing the needs of the publisher."
Alt-weeklies all over the country are reporting big news today, with several trying out new revenue streams, some having been bought and others having done some buying themselves. Here's the rundown:
- The Southland Publishing group, which owns four AAN members, has been sold to MediaNews Group.
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has acquired Salt Lake City Weekly, "the popular alternative publication seen by many as a Mormonbashing, gay-loving and tattoo-promoting tabloid."
- Detroit's Metro Times has purchased the The Detroit News and will reinvent itself as a daily titled, appropriately, The Detroit Daily.
- The Monterey County Weekly has dropped its print edition and gone exclusively online and mobile, changing its motto from "To inspire independent thinking and conscious action, etc." to "Less content; (almost) no cost. What you want."
- The Chico News & Review is mining new revenue sources, including a large-scale yard sale, medical-marijuana dispensary, monthly topless carwashes and a weekend nightclub.
Public Enemy, Broken Social Scene, Panda Bear, Fucked Up, No Age and Atlas Sound are among the big-name acts lined up for the Weekly's inaugural music festival, which will take place in Raleigh this September. The festival is being directed by Indy account executive Greg Lowenhagen and curated by music editor Grayson Currin.
"Mr. Kamer may cite The Village Voice's co-founder, Norman Mailer, as a personal inspiration, but online he comes off a bit like a wifi era hybrid of J. J. Hunsecker and H. L. Mencken, delivering missives on the news media, politics and New York culture in an acerbic, knowing tone -- even by Gawker alumni standards -- sometimes at lengths that call to mind Op-Ed essays more than gossip items," the Times writes in a story on nine "rising stars of gossip blogs."
Miami New Times has reported that Posner, who was fired from the Daily Beast last month after Slate's Jack Shafer revealed Posner had lifted from the Miami Herald, also plagiarized passages of his latest book, Miami Babylon (including from New Times itself). In a blog response, Posner says New Times' reporting is part of a "coordinated effort to destroy" his book.
Calling Alan Prendergast's reporting on how a Wisconsin-based insurance company fought one of its policyholders in court a "riveting tale," CJR's Trudy Lieberman says he "revealed much about the inner workings of an insurance company ... provid[ing] a kind of an insurance 101." She concludes that Prendergast's work proves that the alternative press "can expose the real story" while the mainstream media "continues its obsession with politics and pony races."
A show called "Paper Dresses" that hit runways during the recent L.A. Fashion Week featured clothes made out of the L.A. Weekly. "It might have had a Project Runway challenge feel, but there was no denying the crafting skills, creative construction and whimsy of each and every piece on display," the Weekly's Lina Lecaro writes. "The presentation also served as a reminder of one thing print journalism will always have over web: cool, colorful cover pages."
While the Press didn't take home the top award for "Local Circulation Weeklies" in this year's Investigative Reporters and Editors contest, three of the paper's pieces by two staff writers were finalists. Chris Vogel was recognized for his work on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the juvenile justice system, while Paul Knight's ahead-of-the-curve story on problems with the Toyota Prius was also honored.
San Francisco Bay Guardian executive editor Tim Redmond writes that while he thought Eli Sanders' recent story on the feud between the Guardian and SF Weekly in The Stranger was mostly right, he faults Sanders (and others) for casting the legal battle as a clash of egos. "The thing is, Bruce [Brugmann] and Mike [Lacey] haven't hated each other for decades," Redmond writes. "They weren't terribly close, but they got along fine -- and sometimes, they were political allies." He points to their unlikely alliance at the 1997 AAN Convention (three years after New Times purchased SF Weekly) to push a bylaws measure (and digs up a photo of the two arm-in-arm) as proof. "They were almost, sorta, kinda pals," he writes. "At least for a few minutes."
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