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Writing in Boston's Weekly Dig, Paul McMorrow tries to figure out why a book arguing that the Grand Canyon was created in the Great Biblical Flood is being sold in a park bookstore overseen by the National Park Service. "Nearly 80 years after Tennessee v. John Scopes supposedly made the world safe for science, militant creationism has returned with a vengeance," he writes. "And this time, it's seeking government sanction."

Continue ReadingTom Vail’s Book on Creationism Sells at Grand Canyon

According to statistics released yesterday from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), U.S. music shipments from record companies to retail outlets declined 4.3 percent in 2003 and unit shipments declined 2.7 percent. Sounds bad, but compared to 2002, where music shipments declined 6.8 percent and unit shipments went down 7.8 percent, it seems like the decline rate is slowing down. The year 2003 was important for the recording industry, with record companies offering consumers the widest choice and variety of ways to access music, including through satellite radio and webcasting streams,exclusive release deals, different pricing strategies, new formats and value-added CD/DVD combinations in retail outlets.

Continue ReadingMusic Shipments Decline in 2003

A spokesperson for the digital paper says it's obligated not to publish things that would offend "the reasonable sensibilities of our readers," Editor & Publisher reports. Rall believes the cartoon was dropped because of e-mail campaigns by conservatives. His award-winning cartoon appears in several AAN papers, including The Village Voice and Washington City Paper.

Continue ReadingNYTimes.com Drops Ted Rall Cartoon Due to Tone

More people are reading daily newspapers, but in 2003 they spent a minute less on the weekday paper and seven minutes less on the Sunday paper than they did the previous year. Readership continues to drop in the 18- to 24-year-old age group "despite fresh efforts by many papers to reach younger readers," Editor & Publisher reports. Highest readership was found among African Americans and those 65 and older. Findings are from a survey by the Readership Institute, a division of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University.

Continue ReadingNewspaper Readership Down among Youth

Following an industry trend, the Arizona alt-weekly went down to 25 inches wide, from 27. At the same time it rearranged sections and added more music coverage, editor Jimmy Boegle announces in a special anniversary issue. Although columnists will be allotted 150 to 200 fewer words, the theory that readers don't like longer articles is "full of crap," Boegle says, and word counts in most news and arts stories will remain the same. AAN associate member Katherine Topaz of Topaz Design did the redesign.

Continue ReadingTucson Weekly Whittles Off a Few Inches As It Turns 20

Some argue that the sexual revolution has yet to place men and women on a level playing field. The digital revolution, however, may be closing that gap. Harris Interactive's annual 360 Youth College Explorer Study, released today, found that men and women engage in online gaming, downloading music, and digital photography, as well as text messaging, at similar rates. Commissioned by Alloy's youth media and marketing division, 360 Youth, the study evaluated consumer technology and entertainment usage of college students ages 18-30. Although differences between the sexes have emerged from the research, it's clear that this demographic on the whole--of which 65 percent uses the broadband Internet daily--is far more "wired" than the general population, of which only 37 percent uses broadband.

Continue ReadingGirls Dig Tech Toys Too!
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Warnings of a "killer" flu strain that led Americans to be inoculated in record numbers last fall were overblown hype, Tara Servatius reports in Creative Loafing Charlotte. The experts who drove the story "either worked directly for the flu vaccine companies or served on the boards of special interest groups whose activities those companies funded," she writes. Not only was there no remarkable epidemic, but studies show the sought-after vaccine was only 14 percent effective in preventing the illness.

Continue ReadingFlu Scare Yields Vaccine Makers $450 Million in Added Profits