Orlando police arrested the paper's classified advertising director and two account executives this afternoon on charges of aiding and abetting prostitution, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The Weekly's office was also "served notice on racketeering charges for contributing to the prostitution industry," according to the Sentinel. The charges stem from a two-year operation dubbed "Operation Weekly Shame." As part of the investigation, two female agents went undercover and presented themselves as prostitutes to three Weekly account executives, according to police. Criminal defense lawyer Daniel Aaronson says the Weekly did nothing wrong by taking adult-oriented advertisements. "The papers aren't doing anything illegal," he says. "They're taking ads. If an ad uses suggestive language, the stopping of these ads threatens the First Amendment."
The alt-weekly's website took placed second in the Best Weekly Newspaper-Affiliated Website category. Last year, first place in the same category went to Baltimore City Paper's website. Both papers are owned by The Times Shamrock Alternative Newsweekly Group. The awards, co-sponsored by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek magazines, honor the best new media services from the newspaper industry. Winners were announced yesterday.
Orlando's Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) tells WFTV-TV they used massage parlor ads in the Orlando alt-weekly to nab Li Ping Ding, a "ringleader" who was "running prostitution out of 10 locations in Central Florida." On the Orlando Weekly's blog, editor Bob Whitby smells something funny: He says the Weekly has been a thorn in the MBI's side for some time, and thinks it may be more than a coincidence that the Bureau included four pages of Weekly ads in the press release for Ding's bust. "Could this be part of the culture of retribution the MBI is so famous for?," Whitby asks.
The Village Voice Web site is one of five finalists in the "Newspaper" category of the 2006 Webby Awards, it was announced April 11. Winners will be named on May 9. Orlando Weekly and Baltimore City Paper have also been honored for their online work: Their Web sites are two of the three finalists in the "Best Weekly Newspaper-Affiliated Web Service" category of the EPpy Awards, which are presented by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek. (The third finalist is a Pennsylvania community newspaper, The Almanac.) EPpy Award winners will be announced May 19.
J.J. Marley likes to dabble in different creative fields, from illustration to photography to music. His varied background and his desire to "generate a good vibe" resulted in three very different Orlando Weekly covers that won a first-place 2005 AltWeekly Award. This is the 36th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Tired of political rhetoric that went unchallenged, the Orlando Weekly team of Jeffrey C. Billman and J.J. Marley set about creating an annotated version of a speech by the mayor. Their format-busting work earned them an AltWeekly Award, even though Marley was rooting for a different issue to be entered. This is the 33rd in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
