Shaka N'Zinga is a well-known prison poet and intellectual. He was Arthur Wiggins, a violent and psychotic teenager, when he was arrested and convicted for the brutal rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl. Baltimore City Paper's Blake de Pastino talks to the Afrocentric anarchist whose recent "breathtakingly ambitious book," A Disjointed Search for the Will to Live, is "all at once the story of his desperate, dead-stoned days on the streets of Baltimore, an invective against the 'insane design' of the white man, a tirade about the failings of capitalism, and, ultimately, a meditation on the lingering hopefulness of human nature."
When Tommy Russo finished college at Chico State at the age of 23, he headed straight to Maui with a truck, a laser printer, two computers and the hope of starting a new weekly newspaper. He got the paper started, but after eight weeks he was broke; it took a last minute advertising contract to keep the presses running. Six years later, Russo has turned Maui Time Weekly from a biweekly focusing on surf culture into a full-fledged alternative paper that each week reaches over 10 percent of the tourists and locals on the island, Ian Houston reports.
Katie Belflower was 17 years old, pale and unpopular, with a reputation for going after other girls' boyfriends. But prosecutors say that once she latched onto Mike Simons, a 20-year-old who was already married to another teenager, she didn't want to let go -- no matter who had to die in the process. East Bay Express staff writer Susan Goldsmith reports, in a story based in part on her exclusive access to videotaped police interviews with the suspects, Belflower and an unlikely pair of accomplices almost got away with one of the most chilling murders ever to haunt the endless East Bay suburbs.
In another daily paper attempt to capture young readers, The Washington Post's Express will be given away to commuters and is designed to be read in 15 minutes. "So The Post is going after the hipster demographic -- what a surprise," Washington City Paper Editor Erik Wemple tells the Post. Express will debut in August.
An ad for a Des Moines-area watering hole pictures Larry Eustachy, the former Iowa State basketball coach, lifting a cold beer alongside the man who called for his resignation. The ad, which appears in the July 9 edition of new AAN-member Pointblank, did not amuse ISU officials even though at the bottom of the advertisement, in small print, is a disclaimer - "ad is purely satirical." A university spokesman called it "a cheap grab for attention." Other ads for the bar, Autographs, feature unlikely drinking buddies, such as Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinksy.
The new owner of the Knoxville, Tenn., alternative newsweekly has replaced two staff members after telling AAN News in May that he had no plans for staff changes. Brian Conley, a developer, has named an employee of his real estate firm managing editor and replaced the paper's art director with an award- winning advertising designer, who will direct a redesign.
Twelve years ago, Christopher Hitchens was Dennis Perrin's friend and mentor, offering advice on his writing and holding court at the large dining room table in his D.C. apartment. But somewhere along the way the "kind and generous" author and "former socialist" went wrong, says Perrin: "I can barely read him anymore. His (recent pieces) are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead." What caused Hitch's transformation? Perrin says it was Bill Clinton, 9/11 and life inside the Beltway.
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