The last issue of The Local Planet, an AAN-member paper in Spokane, Wash., was distributed July 8. A year ago, publisher Matt Spaur's wife, founding editor Connye Miller, died, and Spaur said he no longer had the interest or energy to keep publishing. During the "feisty" paper's four-year run, it "poked at Spokane's conservative establishment and took readers on irreverent romps through the region's political, music and dating scenes," The Spokesman-Review's John Stucke writes. Spokane is home to another AAN member, The Pacific Northwest Inlander.
The outgoing editor, Jim Harper, told the St. Petersburg Times that Weekly Planet president and CEO Ben Eason "wants a different kind of editor" and is conducting a nationwide search. Harper will retain his post during the hunt for his replacement. He has been the Planet's editor for 15 months. Before that, he worked for more than 20 years at the Times.
John Sugg wasn't too pleased to receive a call from an FBI agent telling him he was "all over the wiretaps" the agency had made of fired University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian. Judging from the cover of Weekly Planet Tampa, Sugg even feels a little defiant; he's not naming any confidential sources. The former editor of the Planet and now senior editor of Creative Loafing Atlanta is on the FBI's tapes because he's been covering the investigation of the accused mastermind of terrorism Al-Arian for eight years. In a story for the Planet, Sugg reflects on disclosures he's made about officials working on the government's case.
In cities on both coasts, the stimulant crystal methamphetamine has become the party/sex drug of choice among gay men. They call it "tina," Eric Snider reports in Weekly Planet (Tampa). "Tina is attractive because it provides long bursts of energy, a sense of euphoria and well being, and it can make you (along with anyone else who is doing it with you) horny as hell," Snider writes. The downside is that it has the power "to drop its users into a cycle of dependence and depravity, to keep them up for days on end, partying and engaging in extreme, often unprotected, sex." The drug is implicated in the spread of AIDS.
Marc Schultz was grilled by FBI agents acting on a tip from someone who saw the dark, bearded freelance writer reading something "suspicious" in a coffee shop: After retracing his steps, Schultz remembered what he had been reading: a printout of an article from Weekly Planet (Tampa) -- Hal Crowther's "Weapons of Mass Stupidity." "(I)t seems like a dark day when an American citizen regards reading as a threat, and downright pitch-black when the federal government agrees," Schultz writes.
The Local Planet Weekly's Founding Editor and Co-Publisher, Connye Miller, died June 15 of complications related to the rare disease porphyria. Matt Spaur, her husband and co-publisher, remembers her in 475 words of poetry, pain and love.
Spokane, Wash., City Councilman Steve Eugster has dropped a libel suit against The Local Planet Weekly's parent company. He claimed the Local Planet defamed him in a column that suggested he followed no law but his own and depicted him with a pitchfork and horns.
Steven Emerson, who promotes himself as an investigative reporter with special knowledge of radical Islamic terrorists, has abandoned his four-year-old libel suit against the Weekly Planet and former Editor John Sugg. In a 1998 article, Sugg, now a senior editor at Creative Loafing (Atlanta), questioned Emerson's assertions about terrorist plots against him. Emerson sued, saying the articles defamed him. "Emerson never had a case," Planet Publisher Ben Eason says.
Tom Grant, editor of the Local Planet Weekly, announces that he's leaving his job and running for mayor of Spokane, Wash. Grant has been a journalist for 23 years, primarily as an investigative television reporter. His reporting helped free more than a dozen innocent people from jail in the mid-1990s, and he recently helped uncover a secret deal in Spokane by which millions in taxpayer dollars were being diverted to the richest family in town. He has been with The Local Planet for two years.
Weekly Planet (Tampa) has laid off three editorial staffers -- News Editor Francis X. Gilpin and staff writers Trevor Aaronson and Rochelle Renford -- citing flat revenue and a desire to shift focus from political to cultural coverage, the St. Petersburgh Times reports. Neil Skene, senior vice president, group publisher, of the Planet's parent company, Creative Loafing, says the weekly will now use freelance writers for political coverage.
