AAN News
Former Alt-Weekly Publishers Form Dragonfly
Ron Williams and Monte Paulsen, former publishers of Metro Times and Casco Bay Weekly, respectively, have gone New Age with their new venture, Dragonfly. The company they operate part time owns small magazines in Chicago, Los Angeles and Vancouver. "When many of us started alternative weeklies, we spent three or four nights a week out listening to music and drinking beer," Paulsen tells AAN News. "I loved this part of my life. I’m very rarely out that late anymore. I probably spend more of those hours in meditation, yoga."
(FULL STORY)
Marty Levine |
01-28-2003 5:36 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Monte Paulsen
Albuquerque's Water Wars
The Rio Grande is becoming a river of effluent, yet the city of Albuquerque wants to pump more water from the already drought-stricken river, endangering fish and worrying farmers. The consequences could make the region's aquifer unusable in 35 years and cause the city to sink into the hole left behind. Weekly Alibi's Jeremy Vesbach looks at the problem and some possible solutions.
Editor Leaving Riverfront Timesnew
After only a year on the job, Jim Nesbitt steps down as editor of Riverfront Times, the St. Louis Business Journal reports. The business journal also reports other changes in staffing at the New Times paper in St. Louis, including canceling the column "Short Cuts" and making Associate Editor Randall Roberts a staff writer.
St. Louis Business Journal |
01-27-2003 4:59 pm |
Industry News
Latino Mothers Have Healthiest Babiesnew
In public health circles, it's called the Mexican paradox: despite high poverty rates and a lack of prenatal care, Latina women -- especially Mexican women -- have healthier babies than Caucasian or African-American women, Independent Weekly's Barbara Solow writes. However, that advantage goes away the longer they live here. So far, the cause is
believed to be a combination of community and family support, healthy diets, high rates of breastfeeding and low rates of smoking and drinking during
pregnancy. Public health experts are perplexed and studying this phenomenon to see
what it says about American culture.
New Times, Village Voice Media Sign Consent Decreenew
In the conclusion to the unprecedented antitrust probe of the two alt-weekly chains, neither company admitted guilt but agreed to aid the opening of new weekly papers in Los Angeles and Cleveland. The New York Times' David Carr calls the case "a validation of the growing role of the alternative press in an era when many dailies now own monopolies in their respective markets." New Times officials expressed outrage at the government's actions in the case. "The way that it has been told, this was two fat cats getting together so they could get even fatter, but the fact of the matter is, we would not be here if we had not done this deal," says New Times' CEO Jim Larkin, who reveals that $20 million of losses in Cleveland and Los Angeles had put the company in technical default with its lending agreements.
New York Times |
01-27-2003 9:22 am |
Industry News
AAN Statement Re Consent Decree Signed By VVM and NTM
AAN news release |
01-27-2003 10:51 am |
Legal News
LA Prosecutor Responds to Meyerson, Laceynew
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve
Cooley calls a column by LA
Weekly's Harold Meyerson and a
letter to the editor of the Wall Street
Journal written by New Times'
Michael Lacey "self-interested
positions staked out by those who are
directly affected by this investigation."
Cooley claims he reads LA Weekly
"because it is a valuable news
organ" and says New Times LA was
"occasionally very funny, on occasion very
insightful, on occasion very cruel." He
argues that "It's wrong ... to attribute
political motives to government
agencies that are just doing their jobs. ...
we're at the investigative stage. At the end
of the exercise, there may be a
determination that what's been uncovered
falls short of establishing a violation
of the law."
Los Angeles Times |
01-26-2003 4:09 pm |
Industry News
Perdido in the VAnew
Gambit Weekly columnist Ronnie Virgets suffered a stroke on Nov. 24 and entered the Veterans Administration Hospital on Perdido Street in New Orleans for treatment and recovery. One month later he began to write again "I
remember reading somewhere that 'perdido' translates from the Spanish as
'lost,'" he says. "Everything here is the tug-o-war between feel-good cheerleader motivation
("you're making great progress with that leg -- why, two weeks ago, you couldn't
flex that foot even once") and the reality of just how humiliatingly helpless you
have become."
Hapless Media Swallow New Times Hoaxnew
Phoenix New Times |
01-24-2003 7:41 am |
Industry News
Tags: Editorial, Phoenix New Times
Lacey, Savage Respond to WSJ Commentarynew
When you call us wealthy monopolist
bullies, "(d)o you mean this in the
positive sense of wealthy, monopolist
bullies?" New Times' Michael
Lacey asks the Wall Street Journal,
which last week ran a commentary by
Daniel Akst on the New
Times-Village Voice Media antitrust
investigation. In his letter to the editor,
Lacey says the Justice Dept. "is trying to
create legal theory with this ... probe",
which he calls a "stunning grab for
unprecedented federal power." In a
separate letter, Dan Savage,
editor of The Stranger (and AAN Editorial
Awards Host-for-Life), says his paper
was "distressed to be lumped in with
other alternative weekly papers."
Wall Street Journal |
01-23-2003 6:04 pm |
Industry News
Meyerson on the Antitrust Investigationnew
The Justice Department's investigation of
the Village Voice Media-New Times deal
to close weeklies in Cleveland and Los
Angeles is apparently driven by a concern
"that the assisted suicide of New Times
in Los Angeles
reflects
a narrowing of political
perspectives in the city, and that it is
the government's responsibility
to create
more ideological space," Harold
Meyerson writes. He
adds that if investigators really looked
they would find at least as much
"ideologically driven or
monomaniacal" editorial slant at the
dailies as at alternative newsweeklies.
LA Weekly |
01-23-2003 9:34 am |
Industry News
Rare Disease Sidelines Editor
Connye Miller was the editor of The Local Planet Weekly in Spokane, Wash., until last year, when her by-line suddenly dropped off the pages. As her husband and Co-Publisher Matt Spaur now reveals, Miller had to leave the business of writing and editing because of a rare disease known as porphyria. Some people may be familiar with porphyria from the movie "The Madness of King George." Spaur writes about how this illness has affected his family and his newspaper.
Local Planet Weekly |
01-23-2003 11:03 pm |
Industry News
Grown Men, Growing Girlsnew
Is statutory rape culturally acceptable in Hartford's Latino community? The Hartford Advocate's Chris Harris explores a relationship that, while prosecutable by law, is often accepted as a part of life among Latinos. "I think that I would say that we don't look at it as statutory rape," says Carmen Rodriguez, president of La Casa de Puerto Rico, a nonprofit agency dedicated to the social, economic, and political well-being of Hartford's Puerto Rican community. "We look at it as a young girl who'll be marrying an older man. It happens and it's allowed to happen because marriage is expected."
New Weeklies in Cleveland, LAnew
Starting new alternative newspapers has been suggested as one legal remedy to the
controversial closing of the Cleveland Free Times and New Times Los Angeles, Lucia Moses reports in E&P. Even without legal orders, new papers are "moving to fill
the void," she writes. "Silver Lake Press, a 30,000-distribution biweekly in eastern L.A., will change its
name to Los Angeles Alternative Press and expand distribution next month, while
in Cleveland former Free Times staffers started a new alternative monthly, Urban
Dialect."
Editor & Publisher |
01-22-2003 10:07 am |
Industry News
Tags: Management
