As we reported earlier this month, the alt-weekly's story on Anna Nicole Smith's "secret Native American love child" was indeed fake. Stephen Lemons, who wrote the story, tallies up the carnage this week, reporting that CBS News, Gawker and the New Zealand Herald were among the outlets that fell for it. And while the paper was offered $500,000 for photos of the non-existent baby boy at one point, Lemons notes that many of the paper's regular readers knew it was a hoax all along.
Village Voice Media's headquarter's paper has been threatened with a felony indictment unless it removes the home address of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio from its Web site and agrees to never publish the address of a law enforcement officer online again, the paper's Stephen Lemons reports. The threat comes more than two years after the paper first published Arpaio's address in an article intended "to show the absurdity of [the sheriff's] home address' being readily available to any idiot with access to a computer when [he] used the very same law to justify hiding information on commercial real estate he owns." The alt-weekly has long been a critic of Arpaio, who it accuses of corruption and having a "vindictive streak." The paper's cover this week depicts an envelope containing a Christmas card addressed to the Sheriff at his home.
Stephen Lemons reports that he and photographer Lilia Menconi were denied entry yesterday when the press was briefed on an indictment against Maricopa County's schools superintendent. Subordinates of County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the paper was banned because it was "in litigation" with the Sheriff's office; according to Lemons, that's a reference to a New Times lawsuit seeking access to public records. "Take good notes!" Lemons yelled at fourth-estate colleagues as he was escorted from the building. "We’re from the New Times and we’re being kicked out."
Judge Maria Lopez's eponymous show will join the ranks of syndicated daytime courtroom shows on Monday, the Provincetown Banner reports. Lopez is a former Massachusetts Superior Court judge and the wife of Phoenix Media Communications Group Publisher Stephen Mindich.
Related: Mindich tells the Lowell Sun that Lopez is "having the best time of her life."
"Kevin Keane tore me a new asshole a couple weeks ago," begins the June 14 editor's note from Stephen Buel (here, second item). Keane, executive editor of ANG newspapers, was upset by East Bay Express' unfavorable coverage of his company's prospective purchase of Bay Area dailies. Buel says he stands by the Express' "overall conclusion," but he regrets "a few elements": not asking ANG for comment, using a fake byline on an article that rated reporters and not calling "attention to some of the good work done by reporters at ANG." As part of Buel's amends, this week's issue of the Express contains an interview with Keane.
That was one of the questions asked last night during a panel discussion in San Francisco on "The Coming Media Monopoly: Concentration of Press Ownership and Its Effects on Democracy." It will surprise few AAN members that panelists Stephen Buel, editor of Village Voice Media's East Bay Express, and Tim Redmond, executive editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, didn't see eye-to-eye on the matter. According to the "alternative online daily" BeyondChron, Buel said the Express' sale to VVM-predecessor New Times allowed the paper to hire more staff, purchase new computers and rent more office space. "In the past year, I've seen members of an alternative newsweekly buy houses in the Bay Area, and I think that's cool,” Buel said. Redmond disagreed, arguing that conglomeration results in homogenization of content and the pricing out of any true independent press.
Steve Bailey of the Boston Globe looks at the impending battle between Boston Phoenix and Boston's Weekly Dig. He writes that "others have tried to take on [Phoenix publisher Stephen] Mindich and failed," and that the owners of Boston and Philadelphia magazines "have bought the five-year-old Weekly Dig with plans to pour in the resources and turn up the heat on the Phoenix." Bailey paints a picture of Old Guard vs. Youth Movement, of Champion vs. Challenger, before surmising, "More newspapers are better than fewer newspapers."
"This is the the single most gruesome, horrible, despicable, and horrifying thing I've ever seen,'' Boston Phoenix Publisher Stephen Mindich says in an editorial accompanying his paper's link to the unedited video showing Pearl's decapitation. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Mindich decried the fact that the tape had not been more widely viewed and discussed.
