According to FBI documents obtained by the Washington Post via FOIA, the bureau "closely tracked the grand and mundane aspects of the acclaimed novelist's life" from 1962-1977. It all started when notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover read a Mailer essay on Jacqueline Kennedy in Esquire in 1962, and decided that he needed more info on the author and social critic, who helped start the Village Voice in 1955. The Post obtained 165 pages of the FBI's 171 pages on Mailer, many of which were stamped CLASSIFIED and SECRET and SUBV. CONTROL, apparently referring to a program to watch suspected subversives, the Post reports.
Today the Sunshine in Government Initiative (SGI) is urging the administration of President-elect Barack Obama to take four immediate, concrete steps to strengthen open government. The coalition of media organizations that includes AAN is pressing the administration to restore the presumption of disclosure across the executive branch; create an independent, online FOIA ombudsman; ban agencies from proposing or endorsing unnecessary statutory exemptions from disclosure; and speak on the record in all policy statements and current news about public matters. "These actions would show President-elect Obama intends to fulfill his pledge to restore open government in Washington," SGI coordinator Rick Blum says in a release.
Looks like the Chicago Reader isn't alone in running a post-election cover that ruffled some feathers. The Boise Weekly's cover illustration by Alejandro Lempkin, which includes the phrase "Barack Oboner," apparently upset a few readers. "I don't think many of those who I heard from understood that 'Barack Oboner' was not meant to demean the president-elect so much as it was meant to poke fun at people just like me," writes editor Rachael Daigle. "That is, people who live in a certain area of town -- the same area in which I live -- where Barack Obama was heavily supported, a part of town that -- crudely speaking -- had a boner for Barack." MORE: Chicago's CBS affiliate reports on the Reader dustup.
The readers of more than 70 alternative newspapers are being urged to spend at least $100 of their holiday money this fall at locally owned stores in their communities -- a move that could pump more than $2.9 billion into urban economies during this recession-plagued season. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, the American Independent Business Alliance, and East Bay Express publisher Jody Colley helped develop the unprecedented project, and AAN helped line up 73 North American papers to participate. "If every one of the 17.5 million readers of these weeklies were to spend just $100 with local, independently owned merchants, the impact would be enormous," Colley says.
City Paper political columnist Brian Morton's first book, Political Animal: I'd Rather Have a Better Country, was published in October. It's a collection of columns he's written during his eight-year stint at the paper, in addition to a few unpublished pieces. In a Q&A with City Paper, Morton talks about politics, magic (he's a practicing magician), and the current state of political writing. "At the national level it has turned into theater criticism. It drives me crazy," he says. "Don't sit there talking about, 'This person seems like this or looks like that.' No, talk about their policies. It's funny every now and then to take a little cheap shot in a joke, but don't use that as the basis of a column."
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