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."
Twenty years after Bev Johnson, Alex Zuniga, and Steve Moss (pictured) produced the first issue of San Luis Obispo New Times, the newspaper is celebrating not only its anniversary but also having new owners who are familiar faces at the office. Founding owner Moss died in 2005; Zuniga, the art director, and Bob Rucker, the longtime general manager, had to compete with others to purchase the paper. Their majority co-ownership became official on Aug. 2. "We have a lot of potential to keep getting better," Zuniga says. "We're not done yet. Steve developed the philosophy and feel of the paper that we want to maintain: If it's important, accurate, and relevant, it should be in the paper."
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."
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.
Bob Norman of New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Bruce Rushton of Phoenix New Times were named today as finalists in the 2005 Gerald Loeb Awards contest. Norman and Rushton received two of the four nominations in the small-newspapers category, which includes papers with circulation under 150,000. The Loeb Awards, which recognize superior business journalism, have been presented by UCLA's Anderson School of Management since 1973.
Robert Kasner, senior vice president and circulation director for Village Voice Media, died of liver cancer last week at the age of 53. Since 1998, Kasner oversaw the process of getting a quarter-million copies of the The Village Voice off the press and delivered to 1,700 locations. He also led the paper's battle against city rules that imposed tight restrictions on the free-newspaper industry. In an obituary in this week's Voice, publisher Judy Miszner says that Kasner "had an amazing intellect and kindness about him."
