Those who knew him best are trying to extract some good from the death of independent journalist Brad Will in Mexico last month. Friends and family have established a foundation in Will's name, and petitions for freedom of the press and social justice are making the rounds. His cousin Susan Mitchell, a staffer at The Athens NEWS and wife of the paper's owner, calls Will "the epitome of an alternative journalist" and asks for the support of AAN members.

Gov. Mike Huckabee is fuming at journalists for reporting on online wedding registries established for his housewarming, the Democrat-Gazette reports. When he was asked why his wife of 32 years would register for wedding gifts, Huckabee lashed out at the editor of the Arkansas Times, who broke the story on his blog: "I think you let Max Brantley and a blog, a gossip tabloid, create a story for you, and that’s really sad." The incident compounds the already-bad blood between the governor's office and the Little Rock alt-weekly.

When a Chicago man burned himself to death near a busy expressway, initial news reports failed even to provide an identity. But with the help of local musicians, the Reader's Peter Margasak soon determined that the man was Malachi Ritscher, a fixture as a fan and a player on the local jazz scene. On Ritscher's music-focused Web site Margasak unearthed a self-penned obituary and a suicide note that suggested the self-immolation was, at least in part, a protest of the War in Iraq.