In this week's SF Weekly, New Times Media executive editor Michael Lacey (pictured) responds to a recent report in the San Francisco Bay Guardian about merger talks between his company and Village Voice Media. Lacey takes aim at Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann, calling the report "his latest salvo against New Times" and calling Brugmann himself much worse.
While San Francisco Bay Guardian's Bruce B. Brugmann was railing against a New Times-Village Voice Media merger that is still merely a rumor, his competitors at the New Times-owned SF Weekly were commissioning a handwriting analysis of the outspoken publisher. The handwriting expert says that B3's penmanship suggests that he's smart, respectful, and generous, and that he's "very much in control of himself and .... confident in how he impresses himself upon his environment." She also says he's a few other things as well.
In an article in this week's edition of SF Weekly, Editor John Mecklin suggests that the San Francisco Bay Guardian is facing financial problems brought about largely from the purchase of a new office building, and that these problems might be behind the Bay Guardian's suit against SF Weekly, East Bay Express and New Times, Inc. In order to counter the suit's claim that New Times' Bay Area papers are discounting ads below cost, Mecklin offers accounts of the Guardian engaging in those very practices.
Editor John Mecklin takes aim at a "smelly BS-offensive emanating" from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which, he says, contains "huge doses of distortion, some outright falsehood, and very little truth." Mecklin says the "capper" to this offensive is the predatory-pricing lawsuit that Bay Guardian filed last week against SF Weekly and its sister publication, East Bay Express. The Bay Guardian has long tried "to convince San Francisco of the dangerous evil that a New Times-owned SF Weekly represents," writes Mecklin. "Over that time, SF Weekly has sailed ahead, and the Bay Guardian has foundered." (Second item on linked page.) Also addressed: SF Weekly's response to Puni-comic controversy. (Main item on linked page.)
The San Francisco Bay Guardian filed a lawsuit in the city's Superior Court against SF Weekly, East Bay Express and New Times Media, LLC, which owns the two weeklies. The suit alleges that New Times repeatedly sold ads at less than the cost of producing them and offered secret deals to advertisers to keep them from advertising in the Bay Guardian. Both activities would violate California law. New Times owns 11 alternative papers, all of which, like the Bay Guardian, are members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
San Francisco Latino and Mission District activist groups want a public apology from freelance cartoonist Dan Siegler, reports the San Francisco Examiner. Siegler's "Puni" cartoon in the Sept. 15 edition of SF Weekly is a parody of Mayor Gavin Newsom's "Mission Possible" effort to take back the Mission District's "Miracle Mile." The phony message from the mayor asks, "Who exactly are we taking back the Mission from?" and encourages readers to select "the groups that you want removed from the Mission" from a list of 35. Among the choices are "pregnant tweenage Mexicans," "geriatric tamale sellers," and "white dot-com leftovers."
Two New Times investigative series were selected as winners in the 2002 John Bartlow Martin Awards, sponsored by Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. First place went to "Fallout," a look at the U.S. Navy's radioactive legacy in the Bay Area by SF Weekly's Lisa Davis. Phoenix New Times staff writer Amy Silverman captured third place for her special series "Slammed," which exposed abuses in Arizona's juvenile justice system. Sandwiched between them was Katherine Boo, former managing editor of Washington City Paper, for her story in The New Yorker on welfare mothers.
Lisa Davis' "Fallout" series, which won a George Polk Award a few weeks ago, wins a 2002 IRE Award for investigative journalism. Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. honors Davis and John Mecklin of the SF Weekly for “Fallout,” which reveals "how a Bayfront property about to be turned over to the city by the Navy may be far more contaminated with radioactive waste than current cleanup plans acknowledge." Other AAN members Phoenix New Times and New Times Los Angeles were the two finalists in the local circulation weekly division, giving New Times a lock on the division.
