FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

February 12, 2003

PASADENA, Calif. – Jill Stewart, award-winning journalist and former New Times LA columnist, is now writing a hard-edged, biweekly statewide syndicated column about politics and related issues for three AAN member papers and a new weekly, San Diego CityBEAT. The piece also appears in the Pasadena Weekly, Sacramento News & Review and Ventura County Reporter.

“The State of California is in a state of disarray, and nobody seems to care,” says David Comden, group publisher of Southland Publishing, owner of the Pasadena Weekly, Ventura County Reporter (both AAN members) and the 25-week-old San Diego CityBEAT, a new alternative weekly vying for AAN membership this June. “So we contacted Jill, who has been skewering the power elite of Los Angeles for years, and asked if she wanted to take on state capital politics for alt papers,” Comden said.

Jill couldn’t refuse. “Some power brokers must have hoped I was gone for good after New Times LA closed down,” she said, “because they looked positively sick when I waltzed onto the Assembly floor and started interviewing them about their latest crimes against humanity. Writing about the baffled state pols is even more fun than whacking the school bureaucrats at LA Mummified,” said Jill.

Having starting last month, her columns have focused on Governor Davis, the State Prison Guards Union and the fight for vehicle tax money.

To read her latest missive, visit www.pasadenaweekly.com.