Minnesota Independent

A new Tomorrow: Cut by City Pages, cartoonist does Pearl Jam cover

By Paul Schmelzer | 07.30.09 | 10:50 am

Six months after City Pages and other Village Voice Media papers cut all comics, including his, liberal cartoonist Tom Tomorrow yesterday wrote that he felt like his career had been “kneecapped” and that he could’ve “spent the next six months moping and feeling sorry for myself.” Instead, he’s got good news to report, which he characterizes as “one of the great adventures of my professional life.”

Media Monitor: Pilfering pix at City Pages; ‘Collardgate’ blossoms

By Paul Schmelzer | 02.12.09 | 11:44 am

In its humble return, this edition of the intermittent Media Monitor catalogues: Ed Kohler’s latest analysis of City Pages (charged with rampant photo-swiping), a look at how a local Black History Month supermarket promotion has gone national, an acknowledgment of the power of “Brautweets,” and more.

Village Voice ‘gaming Digg’ and other social-media sites

By Paul Schmelzer | 02.05.09 | 1:21 pm

When City Pages editor Kevin Hoffman told me recently that the paper’s Blotter blog saw traffic jump from 25,000 pageviews in October to 235,000 in December, he credited City Pages’ diverse content. But the spike struck technology blogger Ed Kohler as strange. In a new blog post today, he asks, “How does one manage to grow a blog’s traffic by 7X over two months?” The answer seems to be that City Pages and its fellow Village Voice Media papers seem to be gaming the popular social media site Digg. But it’s not just Digg: they’ve tried it with Stumbleupon, Reddit, Newsvine and others.

Gone Tomorrow: City Pages’ parent suspends comics, including ‘This Modern World’

By Paul Schmelzer | 01.26.09 | 1:27 pm

The too-familiar story of media cutbacks hits close to home for progressive readers this time. A month after laying off famed writer Nat Hentoff at its flagship paper, Village Voice Media, owner of a chain of altweeklies including City Pages, has suspended publication of all its syndicated cartoons. That means readers from Seattle to Ft. Lauderdale to the Twin Cities will have to go without Tom Tomorrow’s “This Modern World.”

Media Monitor: Obama endorsements — and that McCain photo

By Paul Schmelzer | 10.17.08 | 10:59 am

As Barack Obama picks up two key newspaper endorsements, news photographers debate if or how to run that embarrassing John McCain debate photo. And Nielsen’s top-30 news sites list shows City Pages’ owner as the only traffic dud for September — and an Alaska paper making a huge jump into the top sites list.