Forty-nine employees of the besieged New Orleans paper will each receive an initial gift of $1,000 this week from AAN's Gambit Relief Fund. Although the Fund has already collected over $52,000 in contributions, AAN will continue to seek additional financial assistance for Gambit staffers, with the goal of raising enough money to help them through the next two or three months. New Times and Village Voice employees, whose parent companies have both aggressively promoted a matching-funds program, make up a large percentage of the individual contributions received in the first week since the fund was announced.

Continue ReadingFirst Relief Payments Wired to Gambit Staffers

When the order to evacuate came, Gambit Weekly staff writer Katy Reckdahl had to decide which would be worse: staying in New Orleans for the storm or delivering her first child in a car on the evacuation route. She stayed. Here is her account of her son's first days at Touro Infirmary and her family's eventual escape from the city.

Continue ReadingGambit Staffer Describes Her Ordeal in New Orleans Hospital

Mount Desert Island, Maine is host to an Onion-like satirical monthly that the Bangor Daily News insists on calling an alternative newspaper. The one-year-old Summer Squash "makes a few people nervous but it's great entertainment," says the MDI police chief. And according to the paper's editor, "We don't get many complaints, surprisingly, despite our [far left] politics. We get a lot of positive feedback. There are no rules, no regulation. We print everything we get."

Continue Reading“Alternative Monthly” in Maine Celebrates First Anniversary