Sara Catania, staff writer at LA Weekly, is one of 12 journalists awarded John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford University for the 2003-04 academic year. During their stay at Stanford, the Knight Fellows design independent courses of study and participate in special seminars. Catania will pursue her interests in mental illness and criminal law.

Continue ReadingLA Weekly Writer Heading to Stanford
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The patients, recent immigrants from countries such as Mexico and Vietnam, are bused in from Arizona for procedures ranging from circumcisions to colonoscopies at a string of California clinics. Every single operation is unnecessary, part of a shocking new health-care scam in which perfectly healthy patients voluntarily go under the knife (or scope) -- and, thanks in part to state laws that force insurance companies to pay claims promptly, everybody involved gets rich. As Paul Rubin of Phoenix New Times reports, it's not always easy money.

Continue ReadingRent a Patient

Lisa M. Collins (Metro Times), Mara Shalhoup (Creative Loafing Atlanta), and Jason Sheehan (Westword) are among the 60 finalists for Livingston Awards this year. The Livingston Awards, the nation's largest all-media, general reporting prizes, award three $10,000 prizes for Local, National, and International Reporting to journalists under the age of 35. The winners will be announced June 17, 2003.

Continue ReadingThree AAN Writers on Livingston Award Finalist List

The Washington Post examines the revival of "retro chic" Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Buried about halfway through the story is the line, "Print ads are relegated to the bargain bin of weekly alternative papers." Who's chugging Pabst (and presumably reading alt-weeklies)? Snowboarders, indie filmmakers, "suited-up young Republicans, faux cowboys and dead-serious blue-collar drinkers," Bret Schulte writes. Of course, AAN papers are so hip they were writing about this phenomenon months ago.

Continue ReadingThe Beer That Alts Made Famous?
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Imagine that your hometown was being bombed and all you could do was watch. Imagine that your 17-year-old son was questioned by government agents who appeared at your door. That’s what the last month has been like for one family of Iraqi-Americans who left their closest relatives in Baghdad. Chrisanne Beckner talks to three Iraqi women as they watch their homeland being blown to bits.

Continue ReadingWhen The Bombs Hit Home
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Stream International in Kalispell, Mont., specializes in providing call center services for a variety of brand-name computer makers, Internet providers and other high-tech firms. Last year, when Stream was named Montana's Company of the Year, Gov. Judy Martz told an applauding audience that, "Stream is a strong global company committed to its employees." David Madison reports that two weeks ago, Stream demonstrated its commitment by laying off a third of its Kalispell workforce while expanding north of border, where its Canadian employees make even less than those in the U.S.

Continue Reading“Company of the Year” Trades Workers for Profits

"'We told you so' is hardly an endearing newspaper motto, let alone the breakfast of champions, but sometimes it's all we little guys have," says Seattle Weekly Editor Knute Berger, explaining why he felt it was necessary to toot his papers' horn for its coverage of mismanagement at the local PBS affiliate. Berger says that when the president of the station was forced to resign last week, the Seattle Times implied that its impending investigation was the reason.

Continue ReadingSeattle Weekly Gets the Scoop, If Not the Credit
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Mohammad al-Madani was born into wealth in Saudi Arabia, where he became immersed at an early age in the extreme Islamist teachings of the Wahhabi sect. But al-Madani didn't end up a jihadi, or even a Muslim. Instead he became a popular college professor, teaching a radical leftist critique of American imperialism at a small community college in Seattle. Sandeep Kaushik traces al-Madani's odyssey and the lessons it holds.

Continue ReadingFrom Radical Islamist to Leftist Academic

Plagiarism at the Tri-State Defender was much more extensive than previously reported, according to the Memphis Flyer, and it may have been perpetrated by the African-American newspaper's current owner, Tom Picou. Last week, Picou told the Flyer that the fraud was committed by an unpaid freelance writer whom he never met in person. This week his former managing editor says she "would stake [her] life on it" that Picou himself was the plagiarist. Most of the stories were lifted straight from the pages of alternative newspapers owned by New Times and Village Voice Media.

Continue ReadingFormer Employee Says Owner of Memphis Paper a Plagiarist