At the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies annual meeting on Saturday, July 23 in New Orleans, members voted unanimously to change the organization's name to Association of Alternative Newsmedia. The association also elected Colorado Springs Independent CEO Fran Zankowski as President and admitted its first online-only publication: The American Independent News Network.
According to a Variety article (reposted on Arkansas Times' blog), Contributing Editor Mara Leveritt's 2002 book Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three will be adapted into a film by Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman, the makers of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Leveritt told radio station KUAR she wasn't worried that the filmmakers' horror-movie background would result in a sensationalized version of her investigation into three teens who were convicted of murder with little hard evidence. "The documentation that's in the book will serve to allow a lot of very accurate representation of the story and of the facts of the story that I reported, so I think it's going to be pretty much a journalistic effort transferred to film," she said.
