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Posing as a heterosexual, Weekly Dig writer Lissa E. Harris infiltrated the crowd opposing acceptance of same-sex marriage outside the State House in Boston last week. A rosary recitation faltered when a man led a chant opposing homophobia. Anti-gay-marriage activists carried signs saying “Adam + Steve = 0 People. Adam + Eve = 6 Billion People.” Inside the State House, Harris writes, she "got confused by the labyrinthine corridors on the first floor and followed a gaggle of protestors from both sides who found momentary common ground as they searched for the stairs."

Continue ReadingGay-Marriage Supporters Drown Out Prayers against Their Cause
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In cities on both coasts, the stimulant crystal methamphetamine has become the party/sex drug of choice among gay men. They call it "tina," Eric Snider reports in Weekly Planet (Tampa). "Tina is attractive because it provides long bursts of energy, a sense of euphoria and well being, and it can make you (along with anyone else who is doing it with you) horny as hell," Snider writes. The downside is that it has the power "to drop its users into a cycle of dependence and depravity, to keep them up for days on end, partying and engaging in extreme, often unprotected, sex." The drug is implicated in the spread of AIDS.

Continue ReadingDoing a Drug Named Tina

Newspapers may be the original grassroots medium, but you'd never know it judging by their piece of the political-ad pie. The Newspaper Association of America's drive to get candidates — and newspapers themselves — to see the potential in political print ads gained impetus last August, however, when its bipartisan poll of 1,200 registered voters nationwide showed that 7 out of 10 regularly read newspapers.

Continue ReadingNAA Promotes Efficacy of Newspaper Political Ads
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Fishermen and citizens harmed by what's been called the worst environmental disaster in Spanish history are looking to a Houston ship classification society to bear some responsibility, writes Josh Harkinson in the Houston Press. In November 2002, the oil tanker M/V Prestige sprang a leak, then split in half and sank 130 miles from the Spanish shore. Now the American Bureau of Shipping, which inspected the ship shortly before it sank, is the subject of lawsuits asking for $1 billion.

Continue ReadingSpanish Blame Oil Spill on Houston Firm
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Two members of the Air National Guard unit in Alabama that President Bush was supposed to join in 1972 tell Jackson Baker of The Memphis Flyer that they were expecting Bush, they were waiting for him, and they're sure they never saw him. The Memphis Flyer posted on its Web site today its late-breaking, copyrighted story that responds to the question plaguing Americans: Was George W. Bush AWOL at a time he claims to have been serving in the National Guard?

Continue ReadingTwo Pilots Claim Bush Never Showed Up at Guard Base
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A Long Island Press news team looks at the implications of the $100 million class-action suit filed Feb. 10 by four Queens advertisers. They accuse Newsday of using a "Fudge ABC" computer program to fool the Audit Bureau of Circulation about its figures. The daily paper allegedly gave extra loads of unordered papers to distributors on audit days and regularly sent vanloads of unsold papers to the dump. Anonymous sources "with executive-level experience at the paper confirmed to the Long Island Press that at least the essence of the allegations" are true, the team reports. Other advertisers could join the class-action suit.

Continue ReadingFederal Racketeering Suit Charges Newsday with Circulation Fraud

Not everyone in the paper's circulation area is at the beach. The new name better reflects where the alternative newsweekly's readers live and work, says executive editor and CEO Bradley Zeve. With a circulation of 40,000 in the communities of the Monterey Peninsula and Salinas Valley, the weekly is much better read than competing papers owned by media giants Knight Ridder and Gannett. Zeve says the weekly's mission of inspiring "independent thinking and conscious action" will continue.

Continue ReadingCoast Weekly Changes Name to Monterey County Weekly