:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 12.09.2004 ::
:: "You don't have to move to Canada" ::
Post-Election Stranger Cover Becomes a Collector's Item
Found at the Web site of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Requests for the Nov. 11 edition of The Stranger are pouring into the Seattle alt-weekly's offices, largely from readers who found a degree of post-election solace in the issue's unorthodox cover, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The cover features text in a series of colored bars that reads "Do not despair," before reassuring readers that they're part of a "diverse, dynamic, and progressive … urban archipelago" that voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. "People really responded to it," says editor Dan Savage, who wrote the cover text. Incoming requests for the issue number around 500, and that's just the beginning. "People want T-shirts, people want posters," says Savage. [Posted November 30, 2004]
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Excerpts from the Seattle PI story:
Kevin Shurtluff, circulation manager at The Stranger, says he's never seen anything like this in his seven years with the Seattle publication (in both delivery and circulation departments).
"It gave people something to rally around," said Shurtluff, who wasn't expecting this sort of response. "A lot of people were feeling glum."
"We provided 100 papers to someone involved with the Democratic Party in Alaska who wanted to bring papers back up for people there. And people wanted multiple copies for people to give their families."
And it's not just extra issues of the paper.
"People want T-shirts, people want posters ... we're not in the T-shirt business," says Stranger editor Dan Savage. But he understands the appeal of the issue.
"The cover is tough-minded. We're trying to put the fight back into people," he said.
"It was really honest. It still had the attitude that we weren't transformed overnight into a weeping bag of slop," said Savage, who said that The Stranger's staff was dismayed at Kerry's loss.
"We were all traumatized by the realization on Nov. 3 and the sense of estrangement from our own country and countrymen and we poured our hearts into this issue."
In processing what all that meant, he said the staff produced an issue that seemed to touch a nerve with their readers.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 9:02:00 PM [+] ::
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