PAPERBOY: Now With Less Extra, Read All About It!

BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up […]

RIP: Pulitzer-Winning Cartoonist Doug Marlette

NEW YORK TIMES OBIT: Doug Marlette, the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist who also created “Kudzu,” the popular syndicated strip, died yesterday in a car accident in Mississippi. He was 57. A cartoonist who was unafraid to offend, Mr. Marlette was known for shocking his audiences with his pointed work. “His cartoons would make you stand up when you were reading the paper,” said Mike Peters, a friend and fellow cartoonist best known for the “Mother Goose & Grimm” comic strip. And offend he did. In 2002, when he drew a cartoon showing a man in Arab headdress driving a […]

PAPERBOY: Read All About It!

BY AMY Z QUINN Look, this whole midweek holiday thing is messing me up. PW came out a day early this week, who knew, and besides, the Philly alt-weeklies are tough to come by down in Cape May. Oh right, you can read them online. Sssshhh, don’t tell the Boss. Anyway, I would have loved a nice light read this week, fortunately/unfortunately both weeklies’ cover stories are thick and juicy like that yardbird you chowed down on at your cousin’s barbecue. OUT FRONT Philadelphia Weekly: Steven Wells has the cover with a feature on a powerhouse girl’s soccer team, the […]

PAPERBOY: American Apparel Ad Envy, Much?

BY AMY Z. QUINN Uhh, remember what I said last week in this space about how the summer doldrums would be setting into the weekly newsrooms aaaaany second now? Well, faster than you can say “Buy me some peanuts and Crackerjack,” both weeklies launch a soft parade of warm fuzzy this week. Inside and out, they’re well-stocked with feel-good features (some of which taste good, too), but let’s start, as always, by judging the alt-weeklies by their covers: OUT FRONT Over at Philadelphia Weekly, my bud DMac not only gets the cover with a piece on the Phils’ inexorable march […]

THE AFTERLIFE: No One Here Gets Out Alive

MARTIN LUTHER: Is So Not Amused, circa 1529 BY AMY Z QUINN There’s a scene from The Sopranos a couple of seasons back when Paulie Gaultieri storms out of his pastor’s office in indignation after learning that all the cash he’d given the parish over the years wouldn’t keep him out of Hell when he died (God forbid). I’m reminded of that this week after learning that in recognition of its 200th birthday, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is offering its flock a gift — plenary indulgences, designed to shorten the time a sinner spends in Satan’s Waiting Room, aka purgatory. […]

EXIT INTERVIEW: Steve Volk Kicks Ass

BY JONATHAN VALANIA As we reported earlier this week, PW Senior Writer Steve Volk — obsessive Bowie-phile, tireless chronicler of all things Beanie, daring dissector of the unholy marriage of crime and justice in this city, intrepid shiner of the Fourth Estate’s disinfecting sunshine upon the dark places where gay meets meth — is leaving the alt-weekly to take a staff writer gig at Philadelphia Magazine. We’ve known Steve a long time and aside from his impressive paper trail and his storage locker full of journo awards — hey, look at this, Steve Volk just took Second Place in the […]

HOT DOCUMENT: The Day The Music Died

Philadelphia, PA — June 22, 2007 — WXPN, the nationally-recognized leader in Triple A music and a noncommercial radio service of the University of Pennsylvania, today announced that it wlll join other Internet radio providers in a “Day of Silence” to protest higher royalty rates expected to go into effect on or after July 15th. Silence is what Internet radio may sound like after that date because of a royalty rate hike scheduled to go into effect. The new rates will also be retroactive for 17 months and payment will become due to the SoundExchange collection organization under the terms of […]

PAPERBOY: We Read ‘Em So You Don’t Have To

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the new, improved and re-named version of Cover Wars — check it out, it’s not just for art directors anymore! Recently it was pointed out to us that there is more to an alt weekly than a pretty cover. And we’re like, ‘yeah, there’s that American Apparel ad on the back, too!’ And they’re like, ‘No Assleak, there’s actually articles and shit inside!’ And we’re like, ‘My god, you’re right!’ Sensing that this recurring feature deserves more than just the Warholian 15 minutes of aesthetic sassiness and art history jokes we’d previously allotted it — and […]

MEDIA: INTERNET KILLED THE TV NEWS STAR

“We’re all pretty convinced that news doesn’t break on TV anymore,” said Eric Bader, senior VP-managing director of digital connections at MediaVest. “Almost everybody across pretty much every economic and age demographic learns of breaking news online, increasingly on mobile.” And where the viewers go, so do the ad dollars. Since 2003, CNN’s cable revenue has dropped 11%, from $424.2 million to $378.5 million in 2006, while digital revenue has nearly doubled, from $34.8 million to $71.4 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Mr. Walton wants to make sure that if the audience is tuning out on cable, it’s tuning in […]

SMELLS LIKE JOURNALISM: Inky’s Sam Wood Ends When Strippers Attack Piece With Sneaker Zinger

Giberson accused two dancers of stealing a pair of sneakers from her locker over the weekend, Saymon said. The argument grew heated. Giberson [NOT pictured] drew a folding knife. As her companion, Jennie Santos, 23, grappled with the dancers, Giberson slashed repeatedly at their shoulders, backs, buttocks and thighs, Saymon said. Leaving the dancers bleeding in the dressing room, Giberson and Santos fled and drove home to Collingswood. Shortly after, they were arrested by Collingswood police, Saymon said. The dancers were rushed to Cooper University Hospital, where they were treated for deep cuts. The sneakers have not been found. INQUIRER: In […]

SATULLO: Regrets? Too Few To Mention, Except…

A big one: endorsing Jim McGreevey over Christine Whitman in 1997. I was deputy then, and supported Whitman, but I lost that discussion. Jim McGreevey. Good Lord. We should have come out strongly against stand-alone casinos in Pennsylvania. Slots at racetracks seemed a plausible, limited gambit to raise needed money for schools, but we should have seen that, in corrupt and secretive Harrisburg, casinos would metastasize. We should have come out sooner against the Iraq invasion. INQUIRER: Oh, NOW You Tell Me