Rep. Mark Foley (pictured) announced Friday that he is stepping down from Congress after sexually explicit e-mails he sent to a 16-year-old male page were made public. Editor & Publisher notes that in May 2003, Foley "took the unusual step of calling a news conference to denounce a report in [New Times Broward-Palm Beach] that he is gay." The author of that 2003 article, New Times Staff Writer Bob Norman, has followed this week's controversy on his blog The Daily Pulp, and he argues that the newspapers that haven't mentioned Foley's 2003 news conference are "cheating their readers out of important context."
Thursday's issue of New Times Broward-Palm Beach contains an exclusive story about millionaire Bruce McMahan's sexual relationship with his adult daughter, which culminated in a secret wedding at Westminster Abbey in 2004. Their split eventually spawned five lawsuits in five different states. In addition to an investigative report by staff writer Kelly Cramer, the paper's Web site BrowardPalmBeach.com features court documents -- which were sealed after the newspaper obtained them -- and video of the daughter's deposition.
On his blog "The Daily Pulp," New Times Broward-Palm Beach writer Bob Norman says that a July 9 Miami Herald article is "verging on a journalistic crime." Robert Santiago penned the Herald story on a transgender child that contains details similar to those in a May 18 New Times story by Julia Reischel. Norman argues that Santiago never saw the child, so he "got the information from the New Times story, plain and simple. And the Herald should have credited the NT story, damn straight." Santiago responds that "all the detail in the story comes directly from the parents and others I interviewed."
Yesterday, Al Capellini, the mayor of Deerfield Beach, issued a press release charging that "those seeking to remove Larry Deetjen as city manager are feeding local press reporters a diet of distortions that are creating a wildly false impression of his long and productive tenure as mayor." New Times Broward-Palm Beach was singled out for a June 1 story by Bob Norman that the mayor claimed was full of "misrepresentations." In an e-mail to AAN News, Editor Tony Ortega promises another article will appear in this week's issue, revealing "yet another business deal that suggests Capellini used his official position to benefit his engineering firm."
The list of finalists for the 2005 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, announced today by press release, includes Trevor Aaronson, staff writer for New Times Broward-Palm Beach. Three $10,000 prizes for Local, National, and International Reporting will be awarded on June 6. To be eligible, journalists must be under the age of 35.
The National Association of Black Journalists announced the winners of its Salute to Excellence Awards competition this weekend in Washington, D.C. The organization handed out six first-place prizes for newspapers with circulations of 150,000 or less, and every last one of them were awarded to New Times papers. Here's the complete list of NABJ award winners.
