Salt Lake Tribune columnist Sean P. Means says he doesn't "like that Savage and others have singled out Utah for their wrath" with a proposed boycott over the Mormon Church's support of California's ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. But Means says he'd "rather engage Savage in this discussion," so he has invited him to come to Utah. Means says he'd even buy drinks for Savage and Salt Lake City Weekly founder John Saltas, who publicly dropped the "Savage Love" column last week, "to let the healing begin."
If this week's cover looked strikingly familiar to readers of the Seattle alt-weekly, it's because the two papers are almost visually identical, with new text. The lead of the '04 cover, "Do Not Despair," has been replaced with this year's "Rejoice. Revel. Repeat."
In the wake of the passage of a same-sex marriage ban in California last week, an effort that was heavily funded by the Mormon church, Dan Savage and others have called for boycotting the state. "Trouble is, all Utahns aren't to blame, nor are all Mormons," writes Salt Lake City Weekly founder John Saltas. "A nonspecific call to boycott is never effective and is fraught with misdirected fire." He concludes that "since Savage hates Utah so much, there's no point in us playing in his sandbox by sending him a regular check." MORE:The Village Voice weighs in on the Weekly's decision. STILL EVEN MORE: Savage has been making the media rounds talking about Prop. 8 this week. Check out his New York Times op-ed, his appearance on The Colbert Report and his takedown of Tony Perkins on Anderson Cooper 360.
In the recurring "So What Do You Do?" column on MediaBistro, the editorial director of The Stranger and syndicated sex advice columnist discusses how he got started with "Savage Love," how sex-column writing has changed in the last 15 years, and why he loves his job. "I get emails from people all day long describing their sex lives and sex problems," he says. Savage also talks about the role of the alt-weekly in a deteriorating mainstream media landscape. "I think alt-weeklies have more and more of a role to play -- particularly as dailies continue to try and swim around with an anvil under each arm," he says. "One anvil is objectivity and the other is 'family newspaper.' Alt-weeklies have the luxury of publishing writing by adults, to adults, and for adults. And that's a real advantage. It's a style advantage, it's an attitudinal advantage, and it's also an urban advantage."
Thousands of people took to the downtown Seattle streets last night to celebrate Barack Obama's election in what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer describes as "exuberant mayhem." Police told the P-I that the crowd fueled by people leaving The Stranger's election party was peaceful, and as of midnight no injuries or vandalism had been reported. On the Slog, the Stranger sums it up: "Hundreds of people have been marching up and down 1st and Pike since our election night party got out a few hours ago. It's the most beautiful mob scene we've ever seen."
The Stranger reports that its party tonight in Seattle hosted by editor Dan Savage will be one of the handful of locations from where ABC News reporters will be filing live dispatches during the election night coverage.
On Thursday, the Seattle alt-weekly published a piece on its website parodying the annual "houses with the best Halloween/Christmas decorations" article so often employed by daily and community papers. But the story, "Hell Houses," featured homes displaying McCain/Palin yard signs instead of decorations, and it included the addresses. Two days later, it "exploded on right-wing blogs." The paper reports that the piece "received over 1,300 comments, including dozens and dozens of death threats against our staff, many directing readers to incorrect addresses." That caused The Stranger to pull the story, but today it has republished it, with the addresses redacted. More from KOMO-TV.
Updating their reporting every few minutes by telephone last night, City Pages' Jeff Shaw and Andy Mannix say they were "assaulted by the cops" while trying to cover a RNC protest march. Here's the play-by-play, from Shaw: "The police said we needed to leave, we showed them our press credentials. I said I was a reporter and that it was a public street. An officer struck me and knocked me backwards over a curb. I tried to get up, and three or four officers shoved me to the ground. Andy was maced." Meanwhile, The Stranger's Brendan Kiley was pepper-sprayed earlier this week at the RNC. "I've hurt myself in a lot of different ways," he reports, "but nothing hurts like pepper spray. The pain is fleeting, but it is crippling." Lastly, Sam Stoker, who attended the AAN/Medill Academy for Alternative Journalism this summer, was arrested twice this week while covering RNC protests for In These Times. He's been tapped by LEO Weekly to write a first-person account, which he's agreed to make free to AAN members to reprint. For more on Stoker's piece, contact LEO's Stephen George at sgeorge (at) leoweekly.com.
On Tuesday -- "the busiest day in The Stranger's production cycle" -- a blown transformer caused power in the paper's offices to go out. After being told that the power might not be restored until 6 am Wednesday, the staff of The Stranger had to take matters into their own hands. "We did something that has never happened before in The Stranger's history," writes Christopher Frizzelle in the appropriately-titled blog post, "How We Got This Week's Issue to the Printer." The staff ended up taking all of the equipment in the production department over to web development director Anthony Hecht's living room, where they wrapped the issue on time.
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