Sarah Johnson, who has been with the Omaha alt-weekly since December 2008, is leaving to become manager of the Greater Omaha Young Professionals, a group formed by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce in 2004 to draw younger people into the city's business life. The 27-year-old was reportedly selected from a field of more than 170 applicants.
At a press conference last week on gun control, Reader staff writer Mick Dumke asked Mayor Richard Daley how effective he thought the city's restrictive gun laws have been, considering the shootings and murders have continued at a high rate. Daley, rather than addressing the issue, picked up a rifle and addressed Dumke directly. "It's been very effective," he said, chuckling. "If I put this up your butt, you'll find out how effective it is. Let me put a round up your, you know." The next day Daley said he regretted his choice of words, while his spokesperson said Dumke was "missing the point" with his line of questioning, a view not shared by the reporter. "Actually, they're missing the point, and they're of course doing it on purpose. They want to miss the point," Dumke writes. "The point is that there's a critical discussion that needs to take place around here about gun control, violence, an understaffed police force, neglected neighborhoods, chronic joblessness, the war on drugs, failing schools, and the priorities of public officials. But Mayor Daley has shown no signs of being interested in it. He's decided what needs to happen, and we're either with him or against him."
Writers from the Chicago Reader, L.A. Weekly and Westword all took home top prizes at this year's James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards, which recognize excellence in food writing. The Reader's Cliff Doerksen won in the Newspaper Feature Writing category for his feature on mince pie, and Westword's Jared Jacang Maher came out on top in the Newspaper Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs category for his piece on the pay-what-you-want SAME Cafe. Meanwhile, the Weekly's Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold added another awards notch to his belt with a win in the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Reviews category.
Just months after San Dieguito Printers filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the Reader, publisher Jim Holman has filed a cross-complaint against the printer, alleging that it has been profiting off the Reader to the tune of $1 million per year, despite telling Holman its rates were the lowest possible it could charge while still making a minimal profit.
The Reader's "Typo Patrol" is a contest of sorts for readers to spot typographical errors in the paper; each person gets $10 for each mistake they point out (capped at $300 a year per person). Publisher Jim Holman tells Copyediting.com that they pay out "between $100 and $200" per week to successful typo-catchers. He says there was a little trepidation when the Reader first rolled out the patrol, since it employs professional copyeditors and proofreaders. But Holman says those staffers haven't taken offense. "All of them see it as a challenge," he says, "to make sure there are no typographical errors."
Jim Warren, who was named publisher of the Reader last fall, told the paper's staff this morning that he's resigning to take on "enhanced duties" with the Chicago News Cooperative, a public-service news service launched last fall. The interim publisher will be Alison Draper, the former Dallas Observer publisher of the Dallas Observer whom was recently named vice president and chief sales officer of the Creative Loafing papers. MORE: Romenesko has the full memo from Warren.
San Dieguito Printers has filed a lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court alleging that the Reader breached a contract between the two parties when it switched to a new printer at the beginning of this year. The printing company says it signed a 10-year contract to be the Reader's exclusive printer in 2005. The suit names Reader publisher Jim Holman -- both as a person and as a business -- as the defendant, rather than the Reader, as the printing company argues that the paper is being operated as a sole proprietorship.
Neighborhood News is a new micro-local publication launched by Pioneer Publishing, the parent company of The Reader. The 11 different editions of the print product will be mailed directly to more than 250,000 homes each month, and the publication's website will be updated with weekly content online.
John Conroy has turned to the stage to tell the story of police brutality he spent more than a decade covering at the Reader. The two-act "My Kind of Town," Conroy's first effort as a playwright, fictionalizes some of the stories of police torture he encountered in the city. He tells the New York Times that for the play he tried to create characters with moral ambiguities in order to stimulate conversations about the audience members' own feelings on torture. "I'm not a 'gotcha' reporter, and I wasn't out to paint cops in any simplistic good-and-evil way," Conroy says. "And I didn't want to tell a story that said that the guilty cops have to be punished or the righteous have to win, but rather that these were real human beings who had to make choices that we as a society need to see -- and that those choices had consequences that we as a society and city need to deal with."
