Tomorrow has created the album-cover art for Pearl Jam‘s next release, due out September 20. Fans can get a free downloadable mp3 of a track from the album, Backspacer, by doing a sort of “internet Easter egg hunt,” as Wired puts it, searching for all nine of Tomorrow’s images in order to get the freebie.

In January, City Pages editor Kevin Hoffmann told the Minnesota Independent he hoped the economy would improve enough to bring back cartoons in the second or third quarter of this year — i.e. approximately now. I emailed him to see if strips like “This Modern World” might be coming back.

His reply:

Sadly, as you know from watching the news, the economy has not improved as fast as Obama (or any of us) hoped, so we’re still in cost-reduction mode. That means hiring and wage freezes, a continued 10-percent salary cut for both me and the publisher, and, unfortunately, no Tom Tomorrow for now (though I continue to be a fan of his work and hope to include him in the paper when the economy improves).

City Page’s annual “Comix Issue” comes out August 19, and local artists are encouraged to submit work. Unlike Tomorrow, these artists will get paid, according to a communique by City Pages art director Nick Vlcek: $25–50 per piece.

Here’s all nine of pieces of the cover art:

CityPages.com image courtesy of Ed Kohler

City Pages, courtesy and copyright: After looking at how City Pages and its parent, Village Voice Media, apparently “game” social-bookmarking sites like Digg, The Deets’ Ed Kohler is again gunning for the Minneapolis altweekly – this time over the paper’s rather rampant disregard for image copyright.

“Photography kleptomaniacs,” including editor Kevin Hoffman, use images without permission, sometimes even slapping “Courtesy of” credits for publications, without ever linking to — or, one would guess, contacting — the source. (Several MnIndy photographs have ended up on City Pages site, including photos we purchased through WDCpix.com which, therefore, we wouldn’t be within our legal rights to “courteous”-ly offer up to anyone else. Another time my photograph, shot in former MnIndy editor Steve Perry’s house, ended up illustrating their story about how Perry left our fair site for MinnPost. When I asked Hoffman about lifting it, his response was to say he found it on Google Images and then to add a linkless credit. Curiously, that picture is no longer attached to the story, but it was — as recently as this Feb. 6 Google cache of the page [screengrab]. According to a Deets commenter, most of the images Kohler lists have also been removed from CityPages.com)

Brautweets get results: After David Brauer ribbed the Strib via Twitter about its long-neglected online newsroom directory, the page today is now not functioning. Hopefully, it’s evidence that it’s offline so Star Tribune staff can cull departed employees, rather than an indication they’re throwing in the towel on a treadmill-like job of erasing reporters and editors after a seemingly unending cycle of layoffs and buyouts. Or maybe it’s the new directory of the newsroom of the future?

Collardgate, ahem, blossoms: Brauer also reports that “Collardgate” — the story about Rainbow Foods’ move to promote collard greens during Black History Month — has gone national, with pickups by Gawker and (by way of WCCO’s Jason DeRusha), BrandFreak, BrandWeek’s blog.

Attention reporters, here’s how NOT to use Twitter.

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 offered an explanation: While most news sites, including the Minnesota Independent, saw a traffic dip after the election, City Pages didn’t because their array of content goes beyond politics to cover food, sports, breaking news and quirky items. But the sheer jump in numbers struck local 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, according to his extensive research, is that City Pages and its fellow Village Voice Media papers seem to be gaming the most popular social bookmarking site, Digg. Hoffman isn’t saying much about the story, so it’s unclear whether advertisers are getting the full story about where the paper’s big traffic comes from and therefore how much local business can expect to profit from it. But that’s not the only question that remains: Is City Pages (or its VVM Diggers) in violation of the site’s Terms of Use? And does Digg’s national and international traffic do much for local businesses?

Kohler’s story revolves around how Digg users (and apparently VVM employees) “Philostrato” and “IvanB“, as well as some City Pages staffers, use Digg to almost exclusively promote stories on Village Voice Media sites. My own research shows that the same users do the same thing on less well-known social bookmarking sites. For instance, here’s current activity by Philostrato — whom Kohler identifies as VVM social media manager and Houston Press web editor Keith Plocek — on  Stumbleupon and Reddit. Last summer, he seems to have given Furl a whirl, not to mention Newsvine, Twitter and Mixx, but ditched them all after about a month. (Full disclosure: Kohler and I discussed his story and shared research prior to publishing; also, I’ve dabbled with social media in the service of this site as well, although in a far less systematic way.)

Kohler created this chart to show how good Philostrato and IvanB are at getting submissions to Digg’s front page, which is a traffic goldmine for Web sites — not to mention a difficult task. One top user says it’s easy to get from 20,000 to 100,000 pageviews — or more — if your site gets front-paged on Digg.

Kohler argues that VVM uses its paid staffers at its various sites, including City Pages web editor, Jen Boyles (Digg name “jbizzy“), to promote its work. And, almost exclusively, that’s what they do: Whether Boyles is submitting stories or Blotter writer Emily Kaiser is “Digging” — voting up — them, they’re doing so mainly with VVM content. And, since individuals doing it are employed by VVM and almost exclusively promoting their employer’s product, this could be construed as a violation of Digg’s Terms of Use. On condition of use, Digg users agree not to use the service:

… with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services; …

In addition, a terms-of-service clause meriting all-caps treatment states:

IN ADDITION, YOU HEREBY AGREE THAT YOU SHALL NOT USE THE SERVICE (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, BY “DIGGING” ANY CONTENT) ON BEHALF OF (OR PER THE REQUEST OR INSTRUCTION OF) ANY THIRD PARTY. FURTHERMORE, YOU SHALL NOT REQUEST THAT ANY THIRD PARTY, OR PAY OR OTHERWISE ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE ANY THIRD TO, MANIPULATE OR OTHERWISE AFFECT THE SITE IN ANY MANNER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, BY PAYING ANY OTHER USER TO “DIGG” ANY CONTENT).

Another issue might be whether City Pages and its VVM siblings are fairly representing their traffic to potential and existing advertisers. “Frankly, Digg traffic is fairly worthless for most advertisers (at least those paying on an impression basis) and for publishers (if they’re earning on a per click or conversion basis),” writes Kohler. Later, he adds, “Advertisers buying impression-based advertising from any website should ask where the site’s traffic is coming from. If Digg users are what you’re looking for, you could just as easily buy traffic directly on Digg.”

I’ve asked Hoffman to comment on Kohler’s story. He replied to my email, stating that, “This one is more about Web strategy than editorial content, so it’s out of my wheelhouse.” He didn’t answer my question about whether he knew that such practices about Digg and other social bookmarking sites were going on, but directed me to Bill Jensen, who’s director of new media at VVM’s Phoenix New Times. He hasn’t returned my call yet.

I’ve also left messages for a Digg representative and media experts, including some at Nielsen NetRatings, which tracks news site web traffic. I’ll post whatever they have to say.

Kohler, who surely knows that stories about Digg tend to skyrocket to the top at Digg, ends with a few questions, including whether Digg is too easily gamed. More importantly, he adds, “Will Ivanb or Philostrato Digg this story?”

Update: As of Friday, Feb. 6, Village Voice Media’s new media director has not returned my call. A representative of Nielsen NetRatings says “this is not something that our data can speak to.” But there is one development: Kohler’s story, unsurprisingly, has made the front-page of Digg, with, I should add, no help yet from Philostrato.

Confirming the network-wide move, City Pages editor Kevin Hoffman said he expects some reader backlash over the suspension of “This Modern World,” which he called a popular feature. “I’m a big fan, but unfortunately it’s one of those functions of a bad economy,” he said. Cutting out syndicated comics, he added, is part of an effort to “trim where we can while inflicting the least damage — realizing that we’re already cutting bone.”

City Pages finished out 2008 by laying off food writer James Norton and Assistant A-List editor Ben Palosaari. Hoffman said Norton was offered a job blogging about food for the City Pages Web site, but because he already writes at Chow.com, he refused. (At his blog, Norton wrote that he’ll be “starting up a new venture, a web magazine dedicated to food in the Upper Midwest).

Food blogging is one area Hoffman said the paper is hoping to make gains. And it’s part of the mix that’s delivered success to the paper’s online endeavors. According to internal numbers, Web traffic was up 40 percent in December, Hoffman reported, with The Blotter blog doing much of the heavy lifting. In October, Hoffman said, the blog garnered around 35,000 page views; by December, that number rose to around 250,000.

He said he hopes that in the second or third quarter of the year, the economy will have improved enough that cartoonists (and theater reviewers, he said) can be brought back on. The belt-tightening now only affects network-wide cartoons, Hoffman says; other syndicated features — like Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” and Rob Brezsny’s “Free Will Astrology” — will continue to run at City Pages.

Obama leads endorsement count: With the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times and the Durango (Colo.) Herald as the latest paper’s to endorse Barack Obama, he’s taken a 3-to-1 lead on endorsements. Erica Smith is updating the tally as a GoogleMap.

“That one”: PDN Pulse, the blog of Photo District News, asks: if you were an editor would you have run that embarrassing John McCain debate-night photo (you know the one)? Commenters almost universally agree it’s newsworthy.

Big gains (mostly) for online news traffic: Nielsen Online’s monthly ranking of the top-30 news site had a new entry for September: The Anchorage Daily News, thanks to a 928-percent increase due to its coverage of Sarah Palin’s nomination as the GOP’s vice presidential choice, landed the 20th spot, with 2.1 million unique visitors. While politics and the economy drove the upticks in traffic — Politico spiked by 219 percent — there was only one top-30 site that saw a downturn: Village Voice Media, owner of City Pages, saw a 13 percent decrease.

Good question: As a reporter is kicked at a North Carolina Sarah Palin rally, Dan Savage asks, “Why are reporters still covering Palin rallies?“

Penalties rise for City Pages’ parent: Expect penalties against Village Voice Media for its predatory ad-pricing suit in San Francisco to keep inching up. On May 19, a judge ordered SF Weekly (owned by City Pages’ parent, VVM) to pay nearly $16 million to competitor the San Francisco Bay Guardian and promise they wouldn’t sell ads below cost. The kicker: She also ordered the paper to pay legal costs for the Guardian, conservatively estimated to be around a cool mil.

About that level of political discourse… Noting the “deafening” silence in the blogosphere over news of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer, MPR’s Bob Collins emailed Scott Johnson at Power Line to see if a post was in the works. All heart, Johnson replied, “I am planning on writing about Senator Kennedy’s contribution to the lowering of the level of poltical [sic] discourse, but will probably wait til tomorrow morning to do so, if I don’t change my mind. “

But the insularity of the media business also often creates journalist-as-local-celeb stories that are less actual news pieces than they are colleague knockdowns or knightings. No matter how you slice it (and as much as they hate to admit it), journos will always be way less important than the stories they cover. And that’s a good thing.

That caveat in mind, David Brauer’s MinnPost piece on Thursday, “What if City Pages Doesn’t Suck?” held a suspicious and simpleminded response from CP editor Kevin Hoffman that was so dubious it deserves a serious second look.

When asked about the continuing and ever-obvious gender disparities at CP, Hoffman responded that A-List editor Jessica Armbruster and copy editor Bridgette Reinsmoen are veteran female employees with responsibility. As a former CP staff writer, I had the pleasure of working with both Armbruster and Reinsmoen, and both are fantastic, especially Reinsmoen, who often put in more hours there than anyone else, poring over pages with a fine-toothed comb and a grimy, old style guide.

However, Reinsmoen and Armbruster hardly have the authority to say what feature stories the paper covers. That’s left up to the almost-all-male news staff, which, minus Paul Demko (who is now here at Minnesota Monitor) now consists of five males and one female. Up until a few months ago, with the hiring of staff writer Beth Walton, the paper’s news-feature writers consisted of six men and zero women. A male-only news regime was in place at CP for more than a year.

Continued: Click “Read more”While I am an admitted big fan of Brauer and his work, I was ruffled that he mostly glossed over Hoffman’s comment, a poor attempt at inoculating the gender-gap criticism, in favor of detailing CPs’ highest-traffic-producing blog posts. Outlined instead are slide shows and quick-hit “winners” about things like naked sushi and Ms. Pac Man in Hustler, dude-centric topics that have become a standard at City Pages under Village Voice Media’s thumb. Hits, it would seem, have outpaced quality as a defining measurement of success.

Compounding the palpable sexism in CP’s print pages, Hoffman is known to staffers as a “frat boy” around the office. While that’s an admittedly small-minded and overly simplistic stereotype, some former (and current) staffers describe Hoffman as a single-minded editor hungry for dude-centricity: There’s a not-so-subtle push to bring in city-gritty, dirty-underbelly, sexed-up stories that can be neatly packaged for web hits. (Web hits have become the fool’s gold of the Internet. The Maxim-ization of the media helped create the current Fark-ization of the media, which has served to turn stories into flimsy currency traded for page views. But that’s a whole other story that reveals another layer of dumbing down altogether. And while I’m at it: SEX. SEX. SEX!)

Former staffers I’ve talked to say there was an uncomfortable and juvenile, slap-on-the-back atmosphere created by the heavily male masthead. Hoffman allegedly told one staffer that, since the A-List (the paper’s picks for best events each week) was being edited by females, it was necessary to make sure it wasn’t too, you know, girly. Testosterone-driven stories are acceptable, apparently, but anything with too much estrogen doesn’t pass the CP sniff test.

City Pages isn’t the only Village Voice Media paper to have a mostly-male masthead. In fact, of the 16 VVM papers, there are only five female editors, although one of those is Patricia Calhoun, who co-founded Denver’s Westword paper before VVM snatched it up.

Even more egregious? Of the papers’ 33 managing, senior, associate editors and senior writers, only 9 are female. In other words, females make up only about 25 percent of all of VVM’s editorial-decision makers. And males consistently outnumber females in the newsroom at all but one (LA Weekly) of VVM’s 16 news newspapers. All hirings go through the corporate office in Phoenix.

To be sure, CP has done some intriguing stories in the last year, such as the one Brauer noted about the shrinking sex-crimes unit at the MPD. And those great stories don’t deserve to get lost among the big-muscled and even bigger-boobed cover packages. But excusing the current macho ideology of VVM based on a handful of well-reported pieces is like reasoning Bravo doesn’t suck because it also occasionally airs a provocative documentary in between endless hours of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” 

So when we’re talking about whether a newspaper “sucks,” perhaps it’s best not to judge a paper’s weight in fool’s gold (web hits), but whether a weekly paper whose mission is to be a “bastion of progressive thought” (VVM’s words) actually achieves said mission, versus continuing to breed and feed chauvinism and prejudice through its hit-hungry story coverage and regressive hiring practices.

Related: Charming: City Pages music editor learned of impending dismissal on the street

VVM ignores Lacey quip: The Arizona Republic has a good question about the story of Village Voice Media’s Michael Lacey using the n-word (coincidentally, on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination): “[W]hy has his publication, which frequently calls others racist, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas, chosen to ignore this situation?”

“Hurtful” gossip: Strib editor Nancy Barnes apologized for C.J. yesterday, but not for the sustained existence of a gossip columnist in the paper’s recently downsized newsroom. She called the columnist to task for a “voyeuristic” and “unintentionally hurtful” piece, described by City Pages here: C.J. spotted conjoined twins Abigail and Brittany Hensel at the Mall of America and started following them. While she notes that her conscience prompted her to stop the pursuit, it didn’t stop her from writing about the publicity-shy girls in her column. One offending quote was when C.J. recounted Fox 9′s Todd Walker describing her reaction: “You just shrugged your shoulders and said, Yeah, well, as if somebody walked by wearing pink shoes on the wrong feet. You were quite funny, your cavalier attitude, about the whole thing.”