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Q: Which employee on the eastern Washington state public payroll makes the most money? A: Washington State Cougar football coach Mike Price. With a salary of almost $440,000 in 2001, Price is far and away the highest-paid public worker in the region. How do we know? Tom Grant of The Local Planet Weekly compiled 60,000 public employee wages from eastern Washington and northern Idaho into a simple database small enough to fit on a floppy. Readers can e-mail the newspaper to receive a copy of the database. Requests began arriving before copies of the accompanying article even hit the racks.

Continue ReadingPublic Employee Salaries Exposed
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There are new victims of Sept.11. After escaping terror in a brutal civil war, a refugee family booked on a flight to Sacramento were stopped in their tracks by new restrictions. No one told their son. This Liberian immigrant has waited 15 long years to be reunited with his refugee children and parents. He thought that was long enough, but he was wrong. Tom Walsh of the Sacramento News & Review talks to Amos Gbeintor.

Continue ReadingOut of Africa: A Liberian Waits For His Refugee Family

"I think we've all had enough of me," Riverfront Times founder Ray Hartmann says as he bids adieu to the paper after 25 years and one million words. "Through the years, we have fought a lot of fights, told a lot of stories. We challenged the elitist, closed Father-knows-best decision-making process of Civic Progress," Hartmann writes in his valedictory column. "We challenged their siphoning of millions of dollars in tourism funds to something called the VP Fair. There were environmental issues, race issues, social issues. Most recently, there was a five-year battle against the late, great stadium scam, arguably my favorite issue ever." Hartmann says the RFT flourished because it reflected "the real St. Louis."

Continue ReadingHartmann Hangs It Up

Boston Phoenix Publisher Stephen Mindich faces a June 4 contempt hearing for his refusal to turn over his e-mails in a case involving his wife, Superior Court Judge Maria I. Lopez, the Boston Herald reports. A Massachusettes judicial commission investigating Lopez' handling of an attempted rape case issued the subpoena for Mindich's e-mails. Mindich's lawyer, Harvey Silvergate, says he has advised his client not to comply with the subpoena. ``When a court order is unconstitutional, one has a right to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court,'' Silvergate tells the Herald.

Continue ReadingMindich Plans Supreme Court Appeal of Contempt Charge
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John Sewell of Metro Pulse interviews two authors who have recently published books about sluts. Sounds juicy, doesn't it? But these two works -- by Emily White, former editor of The Stranger, and Leora Tanenbaum -- deconstruct the myth of the "slut," a tag aimed to alienate any girl outside the mainstream teenage girl tribe. They also expose the double standard that expects young men to experiment with sex at an early age, yet demonizes any young woman who does the same.

Continue ReadingHard Times for Young Girls

Earlier this month, a Texas appeals court declined to dismiss a case in which the Dallas Observer and reporter Rose Farley were sued for libel by local officials who were offended by a "news story" penned by Ms. Farley. The article wasn't labeled as satire, so Denton County Judge Darlene Whitten and District Attorney Bruce Isaacks apparently are concerned that readers may have believed Ms. Farley's satirical tale, which has the pair jailing a first grader for a book report on Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are."

Continue ReadingDallas Observer Faces Libel Suit for Satirical News Article
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After a teenager in Covington, Wash,. turned his father in for growing marijuana, local TV news reporters and daily newspapers fell all over themselves calling him a hero. Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger, asks,"Was I the only pot-smoking parent who was horrified?" Savage savages the "sanctimonious piety" of TV news anchors who praised the stalwart young man. Savage gets both sides of the story. The busted dad has health problems, claims he was growing a small amount of cannabis for medicinal use, and the state legalized medical use of marijuana in 1998. Savage is the only journalist in the area who even bothered to ask. He blames the DARE program for scaring kids. "The DARE kids who turn their parents into the police--some have been as young as 10--expect their parents to get a lecture from a friendly DARE officer about the dangers of marijuana, just like they did at school." Problem is, what the parents get is arrested, which sometimes tears a family apart.

Continue ReadingAre Kids Who Bust Their Parents Really Heroes?