Don Wanagas, a regular writer for AAN member paper NOW Magazine in Toronto, announced in December that he would become media relations director for Mayor David Miller's re-election campaign. "After all my time as a journalist, I thought it was time to see what the other side is about," Wanagas told The Globe and Mail.
The upcoming AAN regional conferences will each include a "Better Watchdog Workshop" organized by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). The AAN West workshop on Jan. 28 will be led by Brant Houston, executive director of IRE, professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and author of "Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide." The AAN East workshop on Feb. 18 will be led by Ron Nixon, projects editor on the New York Times computer-assisted reporting team. Nixon led an IRE session at AAN West two years ago, when he was computer-assisted reporting editor for The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and attendees described it as "worth repeating." Both workshops will cover effective searches on the Internet, cultivation of sources and interviewing, getting the most out of open records laws, and quickly providing context and depth with easily accessible databases.
Diablo Cody -- former stripper, former City Pages associate arts editor and current City Pages "Pussy Ranch" blogger -- likes to keep busy. Her new book, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper," hit stores last week; her first screenplay, "Juno," is scheduled to begin filming in May and is getting buzz as a female "Napoleon Dynamite"; she signed a two-script deal with Warner Bros.; and she is writing a TV pilot for UPN. All of her edgy work is set in Minneapolis. Cody (real name: Brook Busey-Hunt) tells Pioneer Press. "Mark my words, it's going to be like Minneapolis in your face. The world is going to get tired of this city," she says.
Corey Hutchins, editor in chief of the 17-month-old Columbia City Paper in South Carolina, discovered the damage from the fire in his home on Saturday. He then "announced that he will resign, effective immediately," according to a City Paper statement. Hutchins believes the incident is linked to his work on the newspaper, which has drawn criticism for reporting on a sexual discrimination lawsuit against a University of South Carolina department chair and for publishing the governor’s private telephone number in an editorial on the death penalty. "When the police showed up at the house after the fire, they asked me if I had any enemies," Hutchins said in the City Paper statement. "I told them I was the editor of the Columbia City Paper. I didn't exactly have to provide them with a list is what I'm saying."
