John Boonstra, a 54-year-old film reviewer for the Hartford Advocate, had arranged a meeting with what he thought was an underage girl on Friday, police tell the Courant. Instead, he found the officers who had been posing as the girl online and was arrested. Boonstra was charged with criminal attempt at risk of injury to a minor and criminal attempt at second-degree sexual assault, although police say additional charges related to the incident are expected.
The memo seeks to avoid regulatory legislation of news box placement in the town of Greenfield, Mass. Under the agreement, labels with names and phone numbers of those responsible for it will be on each box, according to the Republican. Meanwhile, town officials are studying legislative approaches in case the publishers' agreement doesn't fix the problems of overcongestion, disrepair and poor placement.
The City Council of West Haven voted unanimously in favor of Councilwoman Gail Burns' proposal to limit how many news boxes can go on a block, and it was signed into law earlier this month. When space is an issue, "dailies get first dibs, then twice-weeklies, then weeklies and so on," according to the Advocate. The law seems to have been thought up, drafted and passed in haste, as Burns tells the Advocate no one did an inventory of the boxes, and no one bothered to notify any of publishers before the law was passed. "Anyone can attend a public hearing," Burns says. The law "flies in the face of the First Amendment," Advocate publisher Joshua Mamis says. "Plus, the prioritization is puzzling. Why would the town give preferential treatment to a publication owned by an out-of-state company that has over the years reduced its commitment to local news gathering?"
The Hartford New Haven Advocate ran an ad (pictured) last week that was rejected by the New York Times and the New Haven Register because it portrayed a nude figure, the Yale Daily News reports. The ad, for the Yale Repertory Theatre's production of Lulu, featured a photograph of a woman's bare torso with an apple obscuring her pubic area. (The Hartford Courant reproduced a copy of the image for a story it ran after the Times and Register rejected the ad. The Courant, like the New Haven Advocate, is owned by the Tribune Co.) The theater's associate marketing director says that few have raised objections to the ad other than the daily papers.
In the Jan. 26 issue of New Haven Advocate, three writers engage in a debate on alt-weeklies' connection to pornography. In "Porn Free," Carole Bass questions why alt-weeklies "reflexively pimp for porn." Ryan Kearney and Tom Gogola provide counterpoints in "Porn Goes Public" and "Slings and Eros."
