Michael Tisserand, who wrote the "Submerged" series about the evacuee experience in post-Katrina New Orleans, argues for a National Mardi Gras in the Jan. 24 issue of Gambit Weekly. "It's time to honor the dead and celebrate the living," Tisserand writes. The article is available to AAN member newspapers for reprint at no charge.
This week's issue contains a defense of former Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker by former Sun writer David Simon. Olesker was asked to retire earlier this month after City Paper's Gadi Dechter found that Olesker had lifted language from other writers at the Sun, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Simon argues that "most reporting -- unless it utilizes confidential sources or results from some investigative effort or special project -- has a short shelf life before it becomes nonproprietary," and says that if Olesker is a plagiarist, so are all journalists.
A member of the Arizona Senate's Ethics Committee has filed a formal complaint against Sen. Jack Harper (R-Surprise), arguing that Harper acted improperly when he issued a subpoena requiring that voting machines be released to a consultant hired by Phoenix New Times. Harper said he agreed to allow New Times to fund consultant Douglas W. Jones, a computer-science expert, after the Senate refused to pay for an investigation into a contested 2004 election. On Dec. 21, a judge refused to enforce a second subpoena for the individual ballots to be released to Jones, whose report on the machines is expected in a week. It is unclear whether Jones' report will be made public, or if it will be published first in New Times. According to the Arizona Daily Star, New Times Editor Rick Barrs "said he is not sure whether he will even give a copy of the consultant's report to Harper."
Gadi Dechter, who writes the City Paper's biweekly Media Circus column, found several examples of similar language between Michael Olesker's columns in the Baltimore Sun and work by other writers in the Sun, the New York Times and the Washingon Post. Dechter decided to pursue the story after a Dec. 24 correction of an Olesker column referred to a failure of attribution rather than plagiarism. The Sun's city editor initially told Dechter that there would be no further investigation of Olesker, so Dechter and a research assistant took on the process of checking language from Olesker's past columns against the LexisNexis database. "There was something unusual in the correction, as if it were just a mistake," Dechter says. "Olesker is kind of an institution here in Baltimore, so I set about checking it out." A story in the Sun this morning announced that Olesker had resigned.
To create his award-winning editorial layout, "Coffin Classics," Miami New Times art director Michael Shavalier mixed studio shots of older Goths with shots of modern, drinking, club-going Goths. When designing in black and white, arresting images and good typography are key, he says. This is the 28th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
According to the The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Tisserand is one of four plaintiffs suing in federal court to overturn Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's decision to postpone the city's mayoral and City Council elections indefinitely. Tisserand plans to relocate to the Chicago suburbs. He chronicled his post-Katrina experiences and decision to leave New Orleans in "Submerged," a series of articles commissioned by AAN.
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