Pittsburgh City Paper will be able to see the court order sealing details of the divorce between local publisher Richard Mellon Scaife and his wife, but it won't get access to the official schedule of proceedings. The alt-weekly hoped to see the docket "in order to keep abreast of future developments" in the case. MORE: City Paper editor Chris Potter weighs in on a "surreal few days."

Continue ReadingJudge Unseals Some but Not All Records Requested by Alt-Weekly

Under increasing pressure from attorneys general across the U.S., Craigslist says it is eliminating the Erotic Services ad section and replacing it with an Adult Services section where each post will be manually reviewed and where no "nude or graphic photos" will be allowed. MORE: Read the company's statement here.

Continue ReadingCraigslist Will Drop ‘Erotic Services’ Ads, Create New Adult Section

Envision Central Texas, which advocates for regional cooperation and planning, has awarded Chronicle staff writer Katherine Gregor with a 2008 Community Stewardship Award for Raising Public Awareness. "Katherine presents an in-depth, objective, and realistic angle, even in the face of controversy," Envision says in a release.

Continue ReadingAustin Chronicle Staffer Wins Award from Planning Nonprofit

Gretchen Giles is one of 12 U.S. journalists to win a place in the first International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts. The program, which provides mid-career art critics and writers the opportunity to participate in a two-week intensive training, is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. State Department.

Continue ReadingNorth Bay Bohemian Editor Tapped for NEA Program

Giordano, a former alt-weekly reporter whose Friday afternoon session at the AAN Convention is on "how independent journalism is thriving on the internet and in other parts of the hemisphere," decides to "do some thinking out loud on those themes" in a blog post titled "Black and White and Dead All Over." Giordano says that daily newspapers are dying because they are crippled by institutional biases. "Memo to my remaining daily print colleagues and their nostalgia club: Get over it and get over yourselves," he writes. "In your arrogance, you established calcified 'rules' of 'journalism' and false 'objectivity' that neutered and spayed all of your reporters, domesticated so they would never again afflict the comfortable or comfort the afflicted."

Continue ReadingAl Giordano Previews His AAN Convention Talk

Last year, John Sakowicz began writing "smartly prescient" pieces on the impending financial collapse for the North Bay Bohemian, editor Gretchen Giles writes, so she kept publishing him and even dubbed him contributing editor on the paper's masthead. However, as Sakowicz's work at the Bohemian landed him a local radio show and "expert" status at the Institute for Public Accuracy, some people started digging into his background. Ultimately, Giles found that she couldn't confirm some details of Sakowicz's biography, and the paper has cut ties with him. "It appears that Sakowicz, while talented at understanding and predicting the economic moonscape, does not have the exact background he claims to have, one that we underscored by repeatedly printing it at the end of his articles," Giles writes in a mea culpa. "A credible publication cannot publish the works of writers whose credentials cannot withstand scrutiny."

Continue ReadingAlt-Weekly Parts Ways with Writer After His Credentials Are Questioned