After picking up OC Weekly's syndicated "Ask a Mexican" column, Editor Steven Robert Allen writes, the newspaper received "plenty of positive responses" but also "lots of angry calls and e-mails from people -- both Latinos and Anglos -- saying [the column is] promoting hate speech and negative racial stereotypes." Allen interviews the author, Gustavo Arellano, about the column's genesis and subsequent fallout. "Especially during these times, which are so contentious and fraught with animosity, when you have a column that's addressing these issues, not in a namby-pamby way but as blisteringly as possible, people want to read that," Arellano says.

Continue ReadingWeekly Alibi Asks a Mexican, Hears From Readers

"I'm sure that 90 percent of what's out there that's negative is true," Dan Wherren told the Boston Phoenix about his employer, SuicideGirls.com, in last week's cover story. He was immediately removed from his position as moderator of SGBoston, a regional SuicideGirls group, and a model for the "punk rock" porn site who disagreed with that decision was removed as well. In the Phoenix's update posted yesterday, Wherren said he stands behind the statement, adding that Suicide Girls "is the Microsoft of the Alt-Erotica industry."

Continue ReadingSuicide Girls’ Boston Moderator Fired for Quotes in the Phoenix

Brooke Gladstone interviewed several New Orleans media notables for the April 28 edition of "On the Media" (transcript here; MP3 here) and concludes that since the disaster, residents have been consuming "barrels of information supplied by a reinvented media like a tonic." Gambit Weekly Managing Editor David Lee Simmons tells Gladstone that he has been asked, "How does it feel to compete with the daily newspaper when the daily newspaper is acting like an alternative newsweekly?" He interprets this as a "reenergizing" of the local daily, the Times-Picayune, but adds that "the challenge for them is to maintain that level of energy, and it's going to be interesting to see how they do that."

Continue ReadingNew Orleans Media Experiences ‘An Extraordinary Transformation’

In its May 4 issue, The Pitch profiles John Flowers, founder and chief executive of technology company Kozoru. According to The Pitch, Kozoru received funds from a state economic-development agency, The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation, even though its application contained inaccurate information about Flowers' background that KTEC could easily have checked. The Kansas City Star reports today that KTEC has already announced that it will hire an independent law firm to review its application process.

Continue ReadingPitch Story Prompts Investigation