In August, in an envelope with a fake name and address, the Weekly received the piece of paper pictured at left, the paper reports in last week's cover story. "After sharing the letter's twisted contents with Deputy Editor Joe Piasecki and City Reporter Andre Coleman, we duplicated it for our own investigation and possible use in a future story, and then turned all the evidence over to the cops," editor Kevin Uhrich notes. "They, in turn, turned all of that over to the Secret Service. The cops took all our names, phone numbers and emails for federal agents, but the Secret Service has not called us and will not comment now when we call them with questions. Apparently they are very busy these days with all sorts of open or veiled threats being made against our new president."
The California Newspaper Publishers Association announced the winners of its annual Better Newspapers Contest on Saturday, and nine AAN members won a total of 38 awards. The Sacramento News & Review won a total of nine awards, five of which were first-place finishes, including a General Excellence win. "The News & Review is a salty and irreverent weekly packed with excellent coverage of news and culture, multiple voices in columns and two pages of letters," the judges wrote. "Its colorful design is inviting and, praises to the sales department, it is packed with ads." In addition, Palo Alto Weekly also won nine total awards; the North Coast Journal won eight; Chico News & Review won four; the San Francisco Bay Guardian won three; Metro Silicon Valley won two; and the Pacific Sun, Pasadena Weekly and SF Weekly each took home one award. CORRECTION: The Santa Barbara Independent also won five awards.
The satirical advice book that Weekly writer Carl Kozlowski wrote with Chicago-based standup comic Tim Joyce was actually originally published in August 2001. Back then, it was titled Life: The Final Frontier, and it was gaining steam as the authors made the press rounds to promote it, according to Kozlowski. Then came 9/11, and "book companies panicked and dumped on writers like us," he tells AAN News. The duo stuck with it, though, determined to have their book be a success. They wrote about 80 new pages of material on life amidst the war on terror and created a new version of the book, Seize the Day Job! The Humor Book Al Qaeda Kept You From Reading, which was released this May. For more, visit Kozlowski's website.
With web archives getting more robust by the day, more sources are asking editors to change or delete old quotes and comments, Online Journalism Review reports. Reporter Elizabeth Zwerling talks to a few papers about how they've handled such requests, including the Pasadena Weekly, which in 2006 decided to remove the name of an ex-con from an archived story, six months after it came out in print. The story, on Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams, featured quotes from a man who said he'd been in prison with Williams. The man had been charged with raping and sodomizing his former girlfriend, and convicted of assault -- information that was included in the story, along with the man's claims of innocence. "Our first reaction was 'no don't change it'," deputy editor Joe Piasecki says. "I tend to say that unless (the reporter) screwed up, don't change it." Piasecki, who was also the reporter for the story, says the paper made an exception in this case because the man wasn't familiar with the internet and his quotes weren't that important in the context of the story. The paper ultimately took the man's name out but kept the quotes in. "The guy said every time he applied for a job they Googled his name and this was the only hit," Piasecki says. "We took his name out so he could move on with his life."
Joe Piasecki's "Throwaway Kids" investigative series examining flaws in the foster care system was awarded the 2007 Price Child Health and Welfare Journalism Award by The Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law. "This outstanding series focuses much-needed attention on the dangers and pitfalls that await thousands of youth aging out of the foster care system each year," reads a notification letter from the institute.
Deputy Editor Joe Piasecki's five-part series on foster care and homeless youth, "Throwaway Kids," won a first-place award in the National Low Income Housing Coalition's first-ever Cushing Niles Dolbeare Media Awards, the group announced on Tuesday. Piasecki's series, the publication of which spanned over a month and 16,000 words, received the $2,500 prize in the Non-Daily Newspaper or Magazine category.
