This just in from the folks here at Creative Loafing:

Senior Advertising Executive Named CL Charlotte Associate Publisher

(CHARLOTTE, July 6, 2010) — Wendy Goldstein, a senior advertising executive with McClatchy Newspapers, has been named Associate Publisher of Creative Loafing Charlotte.

As Associate Publisher, Goldstein will be responsible for all sales, marketing, and business functions of CL Charlotte, the Carolinas’ largest city weekly and Charlotte’s leading source of information about the arts, entertainment, dining, and other aspects of city life.

“We are delighted to have someone of Wendy’s stature and experience join the CL Charlotte team,” said Henry Scott, CL Charlotte’s publisher. “Her deep knowledge of Charlotte and its business community will enable us to better serve our advertisers and readers.”

Goldstein, who will report to Scott, joins CL Charlotte from McClatchy’s Charlotte Observer, where she has served as Classified Advertising Manager, responsible for automotive and real estate advertising. Prior to assuming that position, Goldstein was Retail Advertising Sales Manager for the Observer and Interactive Account Executive with Charlotte.com, the Observer’s website.

“I am excited about joining Henry and the rest of the CL Charlotte team,” Goldstein said. “Creative Loafing plays an important role in the life of the city, a role that we intend to expand in coming months to cement our position as the source of information about life in Charlotte.”

ABOUT CL CHARLOTTE: Creative Loafing Charlotte and its website, www.clclt.com, are Charlotte’s leading sources of information about life in the Carolinas’ largest city. The newspaper was founded in 1987 and reaches more than 90,000 readers weekly. It is owned by CL Inc.

ABOUT CL Inc.: CL Inc. owns six of America’s leading city weeklies — Creative Loafing Charlotte, the Chicago Reader, Creative Loafing Atlanta, the Washington City Paper, Creative Loafing Tampa, and Creative Loafing Sarasota. Its holdings also include websites associated with those newspaper properties, the Straight Dope (straightdope.com) and Listen.com sites, and the Digital Advertising Network.

Last Friday, a day after Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason staved off an attempt by lender Atalaya to take over the company, CL Charlotte laid off two valuable staffers: copy editor Natalie Howard and receptionist Caroline Baker. Some employees were asked to work fewer hours. Other CL papers laid off workers last week as well, including Tampa and Chicago.

Other N.C. alt-weeklies are cutting staff as well. The Independent Weekly of Durham recently laid off some folks, and the Asheville-based Mountain Xpress instituted across-the-board salary cuts. These are locally owned publications who haven't grappled with debt from company expansion (and subsequent Chapter 11 proceedings), but they too have been hit by declining revenue.

Creative Loafing Inc., the company that owns Creative Loafing Charlotte, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning.

Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason said in a conference call with company management hours ago that the bankruptcy will have no affect on normal Creative Loafing business and that no liquidation or impending sale of the company is on the horizon. And all Creative Loafing employees and vendors will be paid on schedule.

“The term “bankruptcy” conjures up all kinds of images and demons but it is essentially a legal proceeding designed to give an over-leveraged company the time, process and a safe harbor for which to reorganize its finances,” said Eason in a company memo. “Chapter 11 was the natural place for the Company to go to accomplish an orderly reorganization of our finances.”

While business operations won’t change, according to Eason, the reorganization will better allow Creative Loafing to increase its online presence. And although the company incurred new debts when it recently acquired papers in  Washington  and  Chicago (CL owns papers in  Charlotte, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta and the Tampa Bay area.), Eason asserts that the purchases did not play a role in the reorganization plan

“This filing has little to do with the acquisition and everyone should feel very proud of what we’ve accomplished,” reads the company memo. “It hasn’t been easy but it has been successful. The assumptions we made have not turned out to be so successful. The print business has been under siege from all quarters with the exception of the one place that counts; audience.

"This," said Eason, "is all about a fresh start."

Creative Loafing is proud to announce the fact that we're the shit.

In the 2007 NCPA News, Editorial and Photojournalism Contest, two of our entries won first place. Not second place. Not stinky third place. FIRST place.

In the category of News Feature Writing, reporter Karen Shugart won for her story "Casualities of War." Read it here.

And in the category of Lighter Columns, John Grooms won for three selections from his Boomer With Attitude column. Read them: "Mommy, can I stone the queer?"; "Overkill? What overkill?"; and "Do it yourself campaign ads."