Steve Delgado has left his post with Portico Publications to relocate to Los Angeles this summer. Delgado has been with the company, which owns AAN members C-VILLE Weekly, Free Times and Metro Spirit, since 2002, serving as publisher, vice president and, most recently, president. At last year's AAN Convention, he was also elected to the Board of Directors as chair of the Design & Production Committee. "The last eight years with Portico have been an exciting time in my life and it was a very difficult decision to leave the company," Delgado says in a statement. "The people who make go are immensely talented and I will miss working with them every day. I'm looking forward to finding a group on the left coast with an equal amount moxie that can bring out my best."

Continue ReadingPortico President and AAN Board Member Says Farewell

The Independent Weekly won seven total awards this year from the North Carolina Press Association, including the Hugh Morton Photographer of the Year, the highest honor given in the photography category. That award for non-daily photographers went to the paper's D.L. Anderson for the second year in a row, with the judges praising him for having "an eye for the unique, a great sense of composition, a technical touch and a natural knack." The Indy also placed first in the Online Breaking News, Best Video, General Excellence Website and Criticism categories. Mountain XPress took home two awards, including a first place win for Best Multimedia Project, and Creative Loafing (Charlotte) received one award.

Continue ReadingThree North Carolina AAN Members Nab State Press Awards

Long Beach Councilman Robert Garcia tells the Press-Telegram that the community will suffer with the three-year-old weekly newspaper closing. "I may not have agreed with them on a lot of things, but the whole crew did a great job investigating and providing a check and balance against government and powerful interests," he says. "The city loses something important when they lose an independent voice like the District, even if it's a point of view you strongly disagree with." His thoughts are echoed by Press-Telegram columnist Tim Grobaty, who says the paper "made for jolly competition in local journalism."

Continue ReadingPol: City ‘Loses Something Important’ with District Weekly Closing

Albuquerque's The Alibi turned the tables on Gustavo Arellano, the columnist behind the racy ¡Ask a Mexican! column. The paper challenged Arellano to ask a New Mexican, and the result, he says, was "brilliant." Joseph Baca, a wine writer and native of the state, answered questions on Santo Niño de Atocha, curanderas, chile and Hispanos. "That Baca guy has a future outside of vacas!," Arellano says.

Continue ReadingThe Mexican Asks a New Mexican

The Western Publishing Association has announced the finalists for its annual Maggie Awards, which go to work deemed "The Best in the West." Six alt-weeklies are finalists for best overall publication, with five Village Voice Media titles -- Houston Press, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, SF Weekly and Westword -- the only finalists in the Tabloids/Consumer category, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian a finalist in the Politics & Social Issues/Consumer category. Houston Press and OC Weekly are both also finalists in the Best Web or Digital Edition Magazine Blog/Trade & Consumer category, and many of the VVM papers are competing in other categories:

  • Best Series of Articles/Consumer: City Pages, Phoenix New Times and Westword
  • Best Public Service Series or Article/Trade & Consumer: Houston Press, Phoenix New Times and SF Weekly
  • Best News Story/Consumer: LA Weekly, Phoenix New Times and SF Weekly
  • Best Signed Editorial or Essay/Consumer: Phoenix New Times
  • Best Feature Article/Consumer: SF Weekly
Winners will be announced May 7.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weeklies Finalists in Many Maggie Award Categories

The legal battle between the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly is "a war straight out of the last century in its ruthlessness and its destructive potential," writes The Stranger's Eli Sanders in a 10,000-plus word cover story this week. The piece covers a lot of ground, but frames the battle as one between two alt-titans: Bay Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann and Village Voice Media executive editor Michael Lacey. "These two men have hated each other for decades," Sanders writes, "but with increasing venom since 1995, when Lacey showed up in San Francisco in cowboy boots to announce that he and his partners had just purchased the tiny SF Weekly and planned to make a huge success of it."

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Looks at ‘The Crazy Alt-Weekly War in San Francisco’

White uses most of his space in this week's New York Press review of Greenberg to reflect on the controversy that spilled out last week over his being disinvited from the film's screening. The snub, which was the subject of much chatter among New York film and media types, was allegedly due to White's calling for the mother of Greenberg director Noah Baumbach to have an abortion. As this allegation was debated on the web, Village Voice critic J. Hoberman dug up a copy of the review, which wasn't available online, from the public library and posted it online in a post titled "Proof That Critic Armond White Did Call for Noah Baumbach's Abortion." (By the way, Baumbach's mother, Georgia Brown, was a Voice film critic in the 1980s.) That gesture was not looked upon kindly by White, who contends that Hoberman "deliberately mischaracterized the review," before attacking the longtime Voice critic for "normaliz[ing] the arrogance of class privilege" and calling him "a force behind racist snobbery" and "the scoundrel-czar of contemporary film criticism." MORE: Hoberman responds.

Continue ReadingArmond White Talks ‘Greenberg’ Snub, Attacks Village Voice Critic

The three-year-old non-AAN weekly in Long Beach, Calif., is closing up shop, according to LBPost.com. The paper was launched by the OC Weekly's founding editor Will Swaim, and had many former OC Weekly staffers on board, including Ellen Griley, who was the District Weekly's editor (Swaim left the paper in 2008).

Continue ReadingDistrict Weekly to Fold