The departure of Harmon Leon, who wrote the paper's regular "Infiltrator" column, was announced in a Jan. 18 Editor's Note (here, last item). In last week's column, Leon wrote about "infiltrating" the Adult Video News awards show, but as local Web site SFist later noted, he misidentified the city in which the show was held. According to the Editor's Note, Leon initially claimed that he had written about a previous AVN show, but the paper later discovered that he was actually at a different adult-entertainment awards show and that he had already written about that event for another magazine. Following the publication of the Editor's Note, SFist criticized the Weekly for its handling of the incident, and said that morale at the paper "may be in decline after the departure of (former editor) John Mecklin."

Continue ReadingSF Weekly Drops Columnist Over Misrepresentations

John Saltas pokes fun at Warchol, a former Dallas Observer journalist, in his Jan. 19 Salt Lake City Weekly column, claiming that a recent photo of Warchol reveals the true age of the alt-weekly business. Writes Saltas, "I can't speak for my peers .. but if the face of AAN is the face of Glen -- who by the looks of things can no longer "Do the Hustle" -- we're toast. If Glen's old, I'm old, and all my friends are old. Alternative papers are old. At least, thank God, I have my hair."

Continue ReadingIs Glen Warchol the (Old) Face of Alt-Weeklies?

The Current kicks off its 20th anniversary year with a Jan. 18 retrospective of the paper's two decades, from breaking news about then-Mayor Henry Cisneros' adulterous affair, to the phallic cartoon that prompted businesses to ban the paper, to award-winning stories about media ownership. Journalist Steven G. Kellman writes of the newspaper culture in San Antonio: "Though the entire editorial staff of the Current is outnumbered by just the sports department at the Express-News, they keep the Hearst daily on its toes often by stepping on the toes of the powerful." The Current will auction framed digital prints of its most notable covers at four anniversary events over the course of the year.

Continue ReadingSan Antonio Current ‘Grows Up, But Not Old’