Documents showing how subpoenas were obtained and executed during the grand-jury investigation into New Times are missing from a court file, which has led Judge Anna Baca to order the Maricopa County Attorney's office to turn over those documents by Wednesday and appear at a hearing next Monday, the Arizona Republic reports. At issue is if there was more wrongdoing during the course of the investigation than is currently known. The County Attorney's office has already admitted that prosecutors didn't notify the grand-jury foreman and judge within 10 days of issuing subpoenas in the New Times case, which is required by Arizona law. New Times writer Stephen Lemons asks: "Could the subpoenas be missing because they might offer proof that Wilenchik did not play by the rules?" He points to a new column by Michael Lacey which says that the special prosecutor personally demanded he and Jim Larkin be arrested, asked for the arrests of the paper's attorneys, and "sought tens of millions of dollars in sanctions, fines that would have bankrupted New Times."

Continue ReadingJudge Demands Records from Phoenix New Times Case

Dave Maass, currently a staff writer at the Santa Fe Reporter, doesn't think it was fair of AAN executive director Richard Karpel to single out Santa Fe's The Sun News in his inaugural column this week. "I've read the full piece four or five times now, and I can't find a single cogent argument why The Sun can't be an alternative newspaper," Maass writes. "What right does [Karpel] have to censor the words 'alternative' and 'newspaper' from being used, by his own admission, quite properly to describe The Sun? We're all standing up, speaking out, aren't we?" He adds: "Obviously, The Sun News isn't an alt-weekly in the contemporary conventional sense. But surely there's room in the taxonomy for them." More blog response to Karpel's column here, here, and here. UPDATE: Dave Maass has also posted a follow-up.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weekly Reporter Takes Issue With ‘Hey, That’s Not an Alt-Weekly’

Earlier this month, 10-year-old interview tapes that Robbins still had derailed the trial of Lindley DeVecchio, a former FBI agent accused of helping the mob commit murder. With the dust now settled, he talks to the Brooklyn Paper about what it felt like to be on the other side of a news story. "A reporter has got no business being a part of a news story, but sometimes you get dragged in kicking and screaming and that’s what happened here. I had no idea that my tapes were going to be the knockout punch for this case," he says. "I didn't much like being a part of the story, but I didn't know any way out of it either."

Continue ReadingVillage Voice Reporter Tom Robbins Talks About Upending Mob Trial

The decision handed down last night by the Chandler Public Library Board ended a mini-brouhaha in this Phoenix suburb. It all started a few months ago, when Larry Edwards made public his objection to New Times being available at a library branch shared by a high school. The board also ruled that George Carlin's audiobook When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? would stay in the library.

Continue ReadingLibrary Board Votes Not to Remove Phoenix New Times

Nine days after the Santa Fe Reporter revealed that the State Investment Office had $42.3 million tied up in "highest offender" corporations conducting business in Sudan, New Mexico became the 22nd state to commit to a divestment plan, according to the Reporter. "We are also sending a strong message to the corporate world that New Mexico will not accept investment profits that come at the expense of innocent lives lost to genocide," state investment officer Gary Bland says in a press release.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weekly Report Leads to New Mexico’s Divestment from Sudan