In the conclusion to the unprecedented antitrust probe of the two alt-weekly chains, neither company admitted guilt but agreed to aid the opening of new weekly papers in Los Angeles and Cleveland. The New York Times' David Carr calls the case "a validation of the growing role of the alternative press in an era when many dailies now own monopolies in their respective markets." New Times officials expressed outrage at the government's actions in the case. "The way that it has been told, this was two fat cats getting together so they could get even fatter, but the fact of the matter is, we would not be here if we had not done this deal," says New Times' CEO Jim Larkin, who reveals that $20 million of losses in Cleveland and Los Angeles had put the company in technical default with its lending agreements.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley calls a column by LA Weekly's Harold Meyerson and a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal written by New Times' Michael Lacey "self-interested positions staked out by those who are directly affected by this investigation." Cooley claims he reads LA Weekly "because it is a valuable news organ" and says New Times LA was "occasionally very funny, on occasion very insightful, on occasion very cruel." He argues that "It's wrong ... to attribute political motives to government agencies that are just doing their jobs. ... we're at the investigative stage. At the end of the exercise, there may be a determination that what's been uncovered falls short of establishing a violation of the law."
Gambit Weekly columnist Ronnie Virgets suffered a stroke on Nov. 24 and entered the Veterans Administration Hospital on Perdido Street in New Orleans for treatment and recovery. One month later he began to write again "I remember reading somewhere that 'perdido' translates from the Spanish as 'lost,'" he says. "Everything here is the tug-o-war between feel-good cheerleader motivation ("you're making great progress with that leg -- why, two weeks ago, you couldn't flex that foot even once") and the reality of just how humiliatingly helpless you have become."
Connye Miller was the editor of The Local Planet Weekly in Spokane, Wash., until last year, when her by-line suddenly dropped off the pages. As her husband and Co-Publisher Matt Spaur now reveals, Miller had to leave the business of writing and editing because of a rare disease known as porphyria. Some people may be familiar with porphyria from the movie "The Madness of King George." Spaur writes about how this illness has affected his family and his newspaper.
When you call us wealthy monopolist bullies, "(d)o you mean this in the positive sense of wealthy, monopolist bullies?" New Times' Michael Lacey asks the Wall Street Journal, which last week ran a commentary by Daniel Akst on the New Times-Village Voice Media antitrust investigation. In his letter to the editor, Lacey says the Justice Dept. "is trying to create legal theory with this ... probe", which he calls a "stunning grab for unprecedented federal power." In a separate letter, Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger (and AAN Editorial Awards Host-for-Life), says his paper was "distressed to be lumped in with other alternative weekly papers."
Is statutory rape culturally acceptable in Hartford's Latino community? The Hartford Advocate's Chris Harris explores a relationship that, while prosecutable by law, is often accepted as a part of life among Latinos. "I think that I would say that we don't look at it as statutory rape," says Carmen Rodriguez, president of La Casa de Puerto Rico, a nonprofit agency dedicated to the social, economic, and political well-being of Hartford's Puerto Rican community. "We look at it as a young girl who'll be marrying an older man. It happens and it's allowed to happen because marriage is expected."
The Justice Department's investigation of the Village Voice Media-New Times deal to close weeklies in Cleveland and Los Angeles is apparently driven by a concern "that the assisted suicide of New Times in Los Angeles reflects a narrowing of political perspectives in the city, and that it is the government's responsibility to create more ideological space," Harold Meyerson writes. He adds that if investigators really looked they would find at least as much "ideologically driven or monomaniacal" editorial slant at the dailies as at alternative newsweeklies.
Starting new alternative newspapers has been suggested as one legal remedy to the controversial closing of the Cleveland Free Times and New Times Los Angeles, Lucia Moses reports in E&P. Even without legal orders, new papers are "moving to fill the void," she writes. "Silver Lake Press, a 30,000-distribution biweekly in eastern L.A., will change its name to Los Angeles Alternative Press and expand distribution next month, while in Cleveland former Free Times staffers started a new alternative monthly, Urban Dialect."
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