Village Voice Media executive editor Mike Lacey and chairman/CEO Jim Larkin received the honor at the AZ ACLU's annual Bill of Rights dinner this weekend. They were being honored for publishing the county's illegal grand jury subpoenas against the Phoenix New Times and its readers last fall, for which the pair was ultimately arrested. But in presenting the award to the New Times founders, AZ ACLU past president John Hay explained that the well-publicized dust-up was only the tip of the iceberg. "The excuse we're using is what happened this fall when they faced down the Sheriff and the County Attorney. But they have in fact been defending civil liberties now for at least 38 years," Hay said. "So it is my pleasure to present these awards, which I think are slightly wrong. This says Civil Libertarian of the Year. I present these awards to Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin for being Civil Libertarians of the past four decades."
The Voice has finalists in three categories in the annual awards handed out by the Society for Professional Journalists' New York City chapter: Tom Robbins in beat reporting, Rob Harvilla in arts reporting, and Chloe A. Hillard in minority focus, which includes "coverage of a particular minority community, or of an issue with particular impact on such a community, that has import to the community at large." Winners will be announced May 15.
In order to keep the paper alive and free, the Weekly has decided to sell individual blocks of editorial content to readers for the next three weeks. Each page will be divided into 204 blocks and each block costs five euros (about $8). "The message to readers is that we are asking for their support during this transition," says publisher Todd Savage. Editor Steve Korver explains how it will work: "Fans of our photography page can sponsor that page, or those who love our film reviews can show their preferences by sponsoring blocks on those pages," he says. "We hope to sell out the paper, but we are also curious to see how the pages will look with missing blocks on the page. It could be quite arty."
The paper's founding editor Steve Appleford has been replaced with alt-weekly veteran Steve Lowery, who'll begin his new gig Monday. Lowery comes to CityBeat from the District Weekly, where he was senior editor. He's also been a senior and interim editor at OC Weekly, and a staffer at New Times L.A. He'll reunite at CityBeat with former OC Weekly staffer and "Commie Girl" columnist Rebecca Schoenkopf, who has been named the paper's new arts editor.
"It's been a great run, cabrones, but all the hateful email, the attacks by PC pendejos and the fact that few of you have bothered to submit video questions to my YouTube channel wear on a guy," writes OC Weekly scribe Gustavo Arellano in this week's farewell column. The four-year-old award-winning column had also spawned a book, and caused many a stir in communities around the country when alt-weeklies began running it. Arellano, who is hosting the AltWeekly Awards luncheon at this year's AAN convention, says his work busting stereotypes and tweaking racial prejudices is largely done. "It's no longer necessary to explain Mexicans to Americans because Mexicans are Americans," he writes.
The judge agreed to overturn the law enabling only the Democratic and Republican parties to obtain lists of people who voted in the state's presidential primary, Metro Times reports. The law had been challenged by a lawsuit from the ACLU of Michigan, which the alt-weekly had joined. "The state is not required to provide the party preference information to any party," the judge wrote. "When it chooses to do so, however, it may not provide the information only to the major political parties." Michigan's elections director says they will comply with the ruling, but will not release the records to anyone, even via the Freedom of Information Act. Metro Times reports the ruling won't have any effect on the results of the primary, but could have some implications were Michigan to have a mail-based "do over" primary in order to seat its Democratic delegates at this summer's convention. "[If] voters would be eligible for re-voting in a Democratic primary only if they voted in the first primary," Metro Times asks, "how would the election directors know if the records weren't released?"
Smith, who wrote about dance for the Boston Phoenix, the Village Voice, and many other publications, has died, the Voice reports. A memorial will be held at a date to be determined in May.
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