Julie Ann Grimm, a city reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican, will replace outgoing editor Alexa Schirtzinger.
In a blog post dated Feb. 28, Rall announced that he had raised $21,000 toward legal fees for a potential slander lawsuit against Ann Coulter. In February, Coulter said in a speech and a later column that "in response to the Muhammad cartoons, one Iranian newspaper is soliciting cartoons about the Holocaust. (So far the only submissions have come from Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau and The New York Times.)" Rall wrote in a syndicated column that he had received e-mails calling him "an anti-Semite and anti-American traitor."
According to Editor & Publisher, Coulter was speaking to a conservative group on Feb. 10 when she joked, "Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions." Rall, whose cartoons appear in several AAN member papers, asked readers of his blog if they would pledge money to support a lawsuit against Coulter. Rall said he doubts that Coulter's "claims of 'humor' or sarcasm will fly with a jury since (a) she's not funny and (b) her audiences take her literally and she knows it." In an update, Rall announced that votes were running 3-1 in favor of suing.
A young man was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, and a forensic psychologist who worked on the case didn't believe the teenager had done it. So he turned to Ann Mullen, then a writer at Detroit's Metro Times. She dug around and wrote an in-depth story on the flaws in the Detroit Police Department's investigation. Six months later, the young man was freed. This is the 13th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
