Like several other alt-weeklies, Creative Loafing (Tampa) has put together a holiday auction to raise funds for a local nonprofit, but with a new twist: Cover space, a news story and a restaurant review in the paper are among the items up for bid. "This is our way of saying 'This is not how we do business,'" editor David Warner tells the St. Petersburg Times. "Just this once, you'll see what you get if our content actually is for sale. It's ironic, unchartered (sic) territory."

Continue ReadingCreative Loafing (Tampa) Sells Cover, Editorial Space in Holiday Auction

Drex Heikes, the veteran journalist who came to the Weekly from the Las Vegas Sun this summer, tells the USC Annenberg publication Neon Tommy that he was brought in specifically to beef up the paper's reporting, and that's exactly what he will do. "We're pushing things that are very deeply reported," he says. "We want good, hard-nosed investigative work." Heikes acknowledges that the Weekly has seen some tough times in the past few years, but says he remains confident in the paper's future, in part because he's been told by VVM executive editor Michael Lacey that there won't be any more newsroom contractions (as the story notes, the Weekly is actually hiring again). "I would say, God willing, the place is going to grow and we can be judged on where we are a year from now or two years from now," Heikes says. NOTE: The Weekly points out that the Neon Tommy story has an as-of-yet uncorrected error -- the paper has five full-time editors, not three.

Continue ReadingNew L.A. Weekly Editor Talks About The Paper’s Future

Yesterday we told you about the jury's decision in a case brought against a trio of doctors, in which the plaintiff claimed that the plastic surgeons provided before-and-after photographs of her torso to the Riverfront Times without her permission. The story we linked to noted that one of the doctors testified that the photo miscue wasn't his fault, since Times reporter Kristen Hinman had promised not to use the photos and to let him review the 2006 story before publication (The paper, which denied the doctor's claims, was not named in the suit.) That story, however, didn't explain that Hinman wasn't allowed to testify in the jury's presence, due to what Times editor Tom Finkel calls a "bizarre" mid-trial ruling that said doing so would constitute "unfair surprise" and deprive the doctors of a fair trial. The irony, of course, is that the doctor in question was allowed to testify in front of jurors, and he "fed the jury two baldfaced lies" about the alt-weekly, Finkel writes.

Continue ReadingIn Photo Case, Writer Wasn’t Allowed to Testify in Jury’s Presence

The Minnesota alt-weekly has a big story this week on Michele Bachmann, the conservative Congresswoman who "has distinguished herself by saying crazy things in a very sweet voice tinged with folksy charm ... not unlike Sarah Palin," editor Kevin Hoffman writes. "The coincidence of Palin's book release this week couldn't be ignored, so art director Nick Vlcek decided to do a mash-up. It's the first time in 30 years that we're shipping a City Pages without our logo on the front, but we think it's worth it."

At left, City Pages' 11/18 cover; at right, Sarah Palin's book cover.

Continue ReadingCity Pages Mashes Up Palin Book for This Week’s Cover

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a 2007 lower court decision in its ruling in Wilson v. Central Intelligence Agency, which barred the former CIA officer from revealing the length of her tenure with the agency in her 2007 memoir. The three-judge panel said that the CIA made a good argument to keep the information secret and that it would not "second-guess" the agency's decision. AAN was part of a group that filed an amicus brief supporting Wilson in the case.

Continue ReadingCourt Rules CIA Didn’t Violate Valerie Plame Wilson’s Free Speech Rights

A federal jury has awarded $100,000 to "Jane Doe," a cosmetic surgery patient who claimed that doctors provided before-and-after photographs of her torso without her permission to illustrate a 2006 Riverfront Times story. The woman's lawyers were seeking millions of dollars for compensatory damages alone, but one juror says the jury awarded only enough to pay something to her lawyers and to allow for her hotel and travel expenses. The St. Louis alt-weekly was not named in the woman's suit. However, one of the doctors being sued testified that Times reporter Kristen Hinman promised not to use the photos and to let him review the article before publication, charges that Hinman and her editor deny.

Continue ReadingJury Rules in Lawsuit That Stemmed from Riverfront Times Story