Last notes from the AAN convention

Last notes from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention this weekend in Portland....

>> At the Tugboat Brewing Company party on Saturday night, I ran into Shannon Wheeler, creator of the strip "How to Be Happy" (formerly "Too Much Coffee Man"), along with his hilarious friend Sandra "Smartest Woman in Portland" Cho. We tucked in for a couple of beers and started talking about the state of the media and Portland in general. Soon we were joined by his friend Matt Bors, whose strip "Idiot Box" (at right) is running in a few alt-weeklies around the country (none in Portland). Both Matt and Shannon had come to the conference hoping to hook up (not that way) with some editors who might give them work.

What's up with that? Hyper-local coverage is the only way any papers -- the big dailies or the alt-weeklies -- are going to survive. Local stories, local writers, local concerns. So why not local cartoons? As Matt wrote to me the next day:

Not to bitch (but yeah, to bitch) not many alt-weekly papers seem to support cartoons, especially local ones, enough. There is basically a whole genre of cartooning people dub "alt-weekly cartoonists" that has risen from the industry, but only people like Tom Tomorrow that run 150+ papers can make a living at it.

It goes for the web too. Some run comics, but huge sites like the Huffington Post have blog entries by unqualified celebrities, but not a daily political cartoon or anything. I don't get it. I know I'm biased, but people like cartoons and it seem like a relatively cheap way to keep a lot of people coming back to a site or altweekly.

Testify! So someone give Matt and Shannon some work, already.

>> The AAN gave out its annual awards on Friday. The staff of the Portland Mercury took 3rd place for their Blogtown, PDX (in their first year of eligibility!), and Zach Dundas of Willamette Week took a 2nd in the food writing category for his story "Bean Town." And I was really happy to see that The Independent in Lafayette, La., in its own first year of eligibility, took 1st place for its special edition "Katrina & Rita: One Year Later," which is a knockout piece of omnibus reporting about the aftermath of The Thing.

>> And the Willamette Week has taken on Carla, the dogged blogger from Loaded Orygun, as a summer intern -- a smart move for both of them. Congratulations, Carla. 

Comments

[Samuel John Klein]

I think it's a pure crime that Shannon Wheeler's 'toons aren't as famous as, say, John Callahan's (an act which got tired a long time ago).

TMCM/How To Be Happy should have been in the Mercury since some time now. I even wrote off to Weak Willy and Merc to induce them to get them. Never got a reply.

Sad. Wheeler's brilliant. Leaves me scratching my head when a local boy with his laurels can't get no respect from the local alt-weeklies. Just isn't right.

[Kevin]

I agree - on all counts.

[Charles Brubaker]

As a cartoonist of hoping to be in alt weeklies, this is an issue close to my heart, and I agree with Matt that people love cartoons. I'm convinced that anyone who says they don't are just lying, or only saw bad ones.