Any good history has to start at the beginning

​It's about time. This month's stem-to-stern editorial redesign is the first since 2001.

As with most large newspapers, complete redesigns are infrequent. In this publication, it's occurred roughly every eight-to-ten years. The decision to update our look was made over a year ago, and it's the result of collaborations among several Village Voice weeklies.

Curiously, although City Pages' publishing history includes several significant changes, its visual history is separate from that. Major changes to editorial design have occurred independently of other factors--even name changes and change of ownership.

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Mike Kooiman

Among other changes, the re-design removes the box from around the City Pages logo on the cover.

​This year's redesign of City Pages is its first since 2001, when the paper's current logo was introduced, along with all new typographic styling.

The logo remains mostly unchanged, but gone is its bounding box, which had only served to close off the letter forms from the rest of the cover elements.

Our new look doesn't attempt so much to reinvent the wheel as it does to freshen up its general appeal, and to adjust the typography to accommodate the demands of today's print publishing market.

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​This week's print edition of City Pages is currently being delivered to hundreds of stands around the Twin Cities.

Here are some of the pulse-pounding stories you will find inside:

On the Cover: Andy Mannix brings us some investigative food reporting and a fascinating character portrait of a local soul food legend: Dinner with the Hulk

Blotter: The wife of a local sports media celebrity faces the music for a deadly hit-and-run in Senser's Responsibility.
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​Where has the summer gone?

You try to soak it in with a couple chilled beverages and some time in the sun, next thing you know it's September. With the last three months now nothing but a hazy memory, City Pages is looking back on the most popular blog posts of the summer that was.

What were you people so interested in this summer?
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Jessica Lussenhop was one of a dozen writers chosen.

​City Pages staff writer Jessica Lussenhop has been chosen as one of the "Best Young Writers on the Internet" by the Business Insider.

Lussenhop was one of a dozen young journalists selected for the list, joining staffers at The New York Times, The New Yorker, and a handful of writers for the Gawker empire.

The honor was the second in a short time for Lussenhop, who also took home second place for short form news story writing in the Alternative Newsweeklies' annual Alt-Weekly Awards in July.
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​City Pages took home first place in the "Multimedia" category at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual Alt-Weekly Awards, which were announced yesterday.

The multimedia award went to Emily Kaiser and Nick Vlcek for their March 2010 story, slideshow and video package for "Hip Hop High." The package profiled the High School for Recording Arts in St. Paul and some of its most promising students.

Staff writer Jessica Lussenhop also won second place for short form news story. Lussenhop's diverse three entries in that category looked into bed bugs invading the Twin Cities, a politically-minded monster truck driver and a prisoner who didn't like being called a "cop killer."

City Pages also got a third place finish for cover design, with Mike Kooiman and Nick Vlcek rewarded for their work on cover art for three issues. 
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​It's bad enough that CNN mindlessly parrots junk data about U.S. child sex trafficking in order to scare viewers and score ratings points. It's worse that CNN falsely suggests our parent company, Village Voice Media, didn't cooperate about its Backpage.com property for their sensationalist report on child sex trafficking.

But what really takes takes the cake is that Amber Lyon, the CNN reporter behind both of those incidents, helped raise money for one of the sources she used in her own stories.<More >>

​Sex trafficking is just plain evil, and it's illegal, but a 10-year-review of law enforcement data shows that the heinous crime appears far less prevalent in America than much-hyped data suggests.

Village Voice Media examined a decade's worth of arrests for juvenile prostitution in the nation's 37 largest cities and found 8,263 cases. That's about 827 a year, and 11 annually in Minnesota.

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​City Pages took home 11 first place trophies at the annual Society of Professional Journalists Page One banquet last night, beating both the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press for the third year running.

The Pioneer Press had an outstanding showing this year with 9 first place awards, while the Star Tribune slipped a bit from previous years but still brought home 5 first place wins. City Pages competes in the 50,000+ large newspaper division, against both Twin Cities daily newspapers.

The featured speaker for the evening was Governor Dayton, who discussed education and took questions from the audience about the budget impasse.

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​This brought some smiles to our newsroom: Former City Pages staffer Emily Kaiser's January 2010 cover story about Haze, the forgotten local funk band, has been nominated for an award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

It's an honor to be considered for one of these prestigious Salute to Excellence awards; we're also proud that the other two entries in the news feature category come from Village Voice Media publications.

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