In some local media news... the local Philadelphia newspaper The Trend, also known at various times as the Trend Leader, My Community Trend, Philly.com/Community and various other names, ceased to exist, at least in its editorial-containing form, earlier this month.
I worked there full time from October of 2005 until January of 2007, and continued as their freelance film critic until this month. I greatly appreciate my time there, as they actually hired me to do this writing thing for a living, and I had some great, great times. I got to run an edition of a weekly newspaper, essentially, myself, and I made several good friends there that I've retained to this day. And I never could've imagined, when I was offered the chance to stay on as film critic, that I'd still be doing it almost four years later.
Part of the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News family of newspapers- hence the Philly.com address for my reviews- the Trend, remarkably, had four different owners during the five years I wrote for it- first Knight Ridder, then McClatchy, followed by the Brian Tierney-led Philadelphia Media Holdings group and finally the Philadelphia Media Network, aka "the bankruptcy creditors." It was the latest sale to the fifth owner, which split the Broad Street Community Newspapers division off from the dailies, that finally did the Trend in.
However, all is not lost. Several of my Trend friends have joined Patch.com, a recently launched nationwide network of local websites that is owned by AOL. Yes, AOL still has a function, and a very good one- they're hiring journalists! And I'm along for the ride too- I'm going to be moving my weekly movie review (and sometimes more than one a week) over to Patch, and I'll also be doing some local news stories as well.
North American Publishing Co. remains my full time job, I'm as busy as ever, and I'll be off to CES in Las Vegas next week. But in the meantime, my first movie article for Patch, my Top Ten list for the year, will run later this week. You can still see my review archives at RottenTomatoes.