Charles Apple

The Examiner chain of free daily tabs announced today they…

…will launch new Sunday editions in Washington, San Francisco, and Baltimore and will expand their Thursday editions.

Clarity Media Group CEO, Ryan McKibben today announced changes in the Examiner’s operations, which also include:

Hmm. Excuse me while I edit this down to the main bullet points:

* Doubling the number of single-copy papers available from racks and street “venders.”

* Cutting back home delivery to Thursdays and Sundays only.

* Upgrading the Examiner’s website into a more powerful news aggregator.

The Sunday papers will launch July 13. In those three markets, the Examiner will publish Sunday through Friday.

Here are today’s editions from The Newseum. Left to right: Baltimore, San Francisco and Washington. As usual, tap on a thumbnail for a larger peek:

They’re doing pretty well with the aggregator thing already. I found this story via a Google alert. When I clicked on the link to the Examiner web site, however, I was surprised to find this:

Apparently, at some point, I’ve registered — or at least picked up a cookie — at an Examiner site.

Very impressive… if you like the WAVY News 10 news feed. Without a doubt, PilotOnline.com is much better, though. But it’s not even a component of the aggregate at Examiner.com.

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Let’s pause on this hectic Friday to offer the happiest of VizEds birthday wishes to Ernie Smith of Link. Ernie turns 27 today.

The most interesting picture of Ernie
from his Facebook gallery.
—
Link, of course, is a daily free tabloid and a sister paper of The Virginian-Pilot, with offices located one floor below us in downtown Norfolk.

Ernie’s been with Link nearly two years, starting out in sports and then spreading all over the paper. You’ll note below that he’s been doing covers lately. And they don’t suck.

Ernie provides critiques of design and photo work
last fall at SND/Boston. Photo by Robb Montgomery.
—

A 2004 graduate of Michigan State, Ernie spent nine months as a temporary designer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, working on features pages and learning CCI.

In June 2005, Ernie joined Bluffton Today — in Bluffton, S.C., not far from Hilton Head — where he joined Jim McBee’s crew in turning out a wonderfully inventive and unpredictable microzoned free daily tab with citizen journalism and a huge web component.

In September 2006, Ernie signed on as a charter member of Link.

Ernie performs at Madison Square Garden.
Or perhaps it was a smaller venue. I get them
all confused sometimes. In this photo, I
believe he’s doing “All Along the Watch-
tower” by Jimi Hendrix. Photo from Ernie’s
Facebook page.
—

Ernie is a gifted songwriter and singer. A while back, he was kind enough to give me a CD of him performing some of his songs. I was torn between praise for his work and wanting to yell at him for not pursing some kind of recording deal.

But who would ever want to yell at Ernie? He’s such a nice guy. A couple months ago, he shaved his head in support of children with cancer.

Ernie in March. A side-effect of shaving his head
is that he now looks like he could kick your ass.
I wouldn’t mess with him if I were you. Photo
from Ernie’s Facebook page.
—

A few samples of Ernie’s work:

Find more in his NewsPageDesigner gallery.

Ernie shares a birthday with soccer star David Beckham, supermodel Naomi Campbell, wrestler-turned-movie star Dewayne “The Rock” Johnson, singer Englebert Humperdinck, famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, Russian leader Catherine the Great and World War I aviator Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen — better known as “The Red Baron.”

Plus, today is Fire Day. Seriously.

Best wishes for a happy birthday, Ernie!

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If you think resources are tight at large and mid-size dailies, just ask the folks at tiny dailies and weeklies. Even places you thought didn’t have enough belt to tighten have tightened their belts.

In steps SmartNewsroom, a new venture from the folks at SmartNews, a free weekly tab in Fayetteville, N.C.

The idea: What if there were a content service — with stories, photos, graphics — that served these micro-papers and charged only micro-fees? Small papers throughout the country might really take advantage of a resource like that.

And, naturally, if enough newspapers bought that content, it could possibly make it worth the effort for the writers, photographers and artists who offer their work.

Small fees x lots of tiny papers out there = decent money.

Sounds like a great idea. SmartNews publisher Randy Foster and managing editor Jim McBee have been working on a way to make this happen.

SmartNews’ Jim McBee
—

They’re ready to begin testing. They have their beta site up – Jim points out that it’s just a framework now; it’ll fill in as they acquire content.

What they need, obviously, is some content to start out with.

Jim writes:

For our beta version, we’d like to have 30 really good freelancers from a broad spectrum — news, sports, features, biz, opinion; writing, photography, illustration, page design and graphics; investigative, spot coverage, human interest; traditional and alternative.

We have a handful of folks lined up, but I need your help finding more freelancers to help us roll this thing out. I bet you know someone who’s been laid off, or recently taken a buyout, or who’s just decided to get out of the rotten newspaper game — but who still has a passion for journalism. Or you may know people who already make a living or part of one selling stories, photos, illustrations to whoever’s buying. This site is for them.

Please pass this note along to anyone you know who freelances. Our plan is to get seriously cranking this summer.

Here’s some boilerplate on SmartNewsroom:

What is SmartNewsroom?

SNR is a Web business where freelancers upload content and publishers buy it.

Publications buy only what they need; journalists have control over their products and get a little (maybe even a lot of) extra money — and continue to pursue their crafts. Editors and freelancers stop spending valuable time recruiting prospects and focus on what they’re good at: journalism and publishing.

Why write/shoot/draw on spec?

First, the smart thing to do is repurpose work you’ve already sold, but not exclusively.

Second, sometimes the news won’t wait for you to make a deal.

Third, instead of freelancers pitching story ideas, or editors hunting freelancers to cover stories, let the freelancers get on with writing, shooting, drawing and designing; let editors get on with editing and publishing.

How does this work?

A publication only pays a tiny price for each story, photo, graphic or page; you make money by selling to many publications.

Each time a publication buys your work, they’re required to rate it before they buy anything else. Your rating is the average of all your previous story-ratings, and the price of your content is your rating multiplied by the size of publication making the purchase.

You get every penny from the purchase, and you get paid when your account reaches $100.

There’s more info here.

Sounds really interesting, Jim. This is just the sort of thing that would really help some of the small papers who sent folks to my recent sessions in Cary, N.C. and in Dallas.

If you’re interested — either as a contributor or as a customer — please follow the links and contact Jim right away.

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Today’s Link cover: 

The illustration is by a local artist who apparently enjoys shocking people with his work. Be glad I can’t find a copy of a piece Link ran inside showing a jellyfish swimming out of the mouth of a blindfolded girl with green hair.

His name is Jason Levesque. But he likes to be called Stuntkid. He’s from Chesapeake and works as an interactive designer for Grow Interactive in Norfolk.

About that cover: Link got Levesque to draw it especially for today’s front, writes Link’s Deanne Bradley:

Jason Levesque stumbled upon his inspiration for the cover art in a BBC documentary, “Life in the Undergrowth.”

“There was just lots of slugs and slugs mating. It was disgusting. I was just kind of repulsed,” he said.

“I was thinking about stepping barefoot on slugs and how nasty they are, and then taking slugs and making them gummy-colored like decisious candies.”

The background is filled with all the “creepy crawlies” he’s obsessed with. The illustration took about six hours, he said.

For a closer look — although I can’t imagine why you’d want one — squish on this thumbnail:

I don’t think Link has the story or the other art featured inside posted on its site. But here it is, just the same.

This is part of a series of covers Link has solicited from area artists, each running on Mondays this month. One printed last week — Wallace Berkley Gibbs III — known as Berkvisual — did the honors:

You can catch others, obviously, on April 21 and April 28. All four are by men; Cover illustrations by female area artists will run this fall.

This seems like a very interesting idea — getting local artists to guest-design your cover. I’m not sure what’s the rationale for splitting up the male and female artists by the time of year.

And I’m really not sure about those snails. I find them really, really distubing. As I do the inside images.

By the way, I tried to give you a link to Stuntkid’s online portfolio, but I’m told there is nudity involved. I’ll, um, have to check it out later.

Link is a free five-days-a-week publication owned by Landmark Communications, the corporate parent of my employer, The Virginian-Pilot. Their offices are located a floor below us here in downtown Norfolk.

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Charles Gooch of The Kansas City Star writes:

Today was the launch day for the Star’s new publication, Ink — a magazine for 20- and 30-somethings that’s free and hits the news rack every Wednesday.

The design was concocted and carried out by Tasha Fabela-Jonas in house with help from uber-talented designer/copy editor/music critic Elizabeth Garcia. Those of you familiar with CCI can sympathize with how tedious this process was.

It’s geared toward the young professional primarily with plenty of
networking/career/dating/night-life advice, but deals also in entertainment and off-the-beaten path news.

   

The Web site — a combination news site, entertainment site and social network — has been online for almost a month and can be found at www.inkkc.com.

You can also find a ton of blogs there too.

Lookin’ good, there, Goochmeister. I especially like that debut cover. That should move a few copies out of the racks.

The pages Gooch sent seem especially well-thought-out for color choices. The sports page, in particular, is just gorgeous.

Is it possible to color-coordinate inside color pages with adjacent ads? I doubt it can be done every day on most pages. But it sure is attractive.

Ink looks like a fun read. Best wishes to all the folks involved.

—
UPDATE

Charles answered a few questions for me.

Judging by the names of the original PDF files he sent me, this seemed like a huge publication. I asked him how many pages the first week’s issue contained, plus a few questions about color positions and staffing.

Gooch replies:

The first issue was 96 pages. We’ll have some shrinkage, but as of right now, it’s not officially set. (I’m estimating about 68-80 something.) Judging by the first run, it’s going to be heavy on color as 68 out of 96 were full color. (Also thanks to our new-fangled press, it’s stapled.)

Stapled! Holy cow!

Ink has as staff of 8. An editor, deputy editor, three reporters, a photographer, a copy editor and a designer. A web producer is probably on the way, but not set just yet. From the design standpoint, it’s being put together by just the copy editor and designer. Star personnel are downstairs away from the hip Ink lair.

Copy wise, the three reporters are doing the heavy lifting (a few stories each and a column here and there) with the editors Laurie Mansfield and Lindsay Hanson Metcalf pitching in on the running items. Also, features designer Neil Nakahodo has a gaming blog/column, copy editor/designer Pam Spencer is doing a dating column/blog, sports copy editor/designer Greg Moore is handling sports and I’m writing movie reviews.

Very nice, man. Thanks for the info.

I have to give a shoutout to my old friend Laurie. I worked with her in Des Moines. She was extremely bright, aways full of ideas and very eager to work with us visual types. One features project I worked on with her — how to speed-clean your home, illustrated with my daughter’s Polly Pocket doll collection — is still in my portfolio.

Again: Best wishes to the whole crew at Ink.

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