Mailer, who started the country's first alt-weekly with Daniel Wolf and Edwin Fancher in 1955, died early Saturday in Manhattan. He was 84. After he finished his third novel, Mailer put up $10,000 to launch the new weekly and came up with the name, the Voice reports. "Though Mailer wanted the paper to be 'outrageous' and 'give a little speed to that moral and sexual revolution which is yet to come upon us,' his partners, he said, were more interested in making it a successful, established venture," according to the Voice. He soon started writing a column in the paper, only to quit the paper four months later because he said there were typographical errors in his column. For more reflections on Mailer from around the world, visit Google News.
Fred W. McDarrah died in his sleep at home in New York City early Tuesday morning. He was 81. "Over a 50-year span, McDarrah documented the rise of the Beat Generation, the city’s postmodern art movement, its off-off-Broadway actors, troubadours, politicians, agitators and social protests," the Voice reports. "He was really what I would call a reporter photographer," Voice writer Nat Hentoff tells the New York Sun. "Nobody could intimidate him." McDarrah was an enduring presence at the paper, remaining on the Voice masthead as a consulting editor to this day. "He was constantly sending suggestions," editor Tony Ortega tells the Associated Press.
The AAN member bi-weekly has been named the recipient of this year's Molly Ivins "Give 'Em Hell" Award from the Project, which promotes racial, social, and economic justice through education and litigation. "[The Observer] covers stories crucial to the public interest and provokes dialog that promotes democratic participation and open government, in pursuit of a vision of Texas where education, justice, and material progress are available to all," the Project says in a statement.
As we mentioned yesterday, Tom Robbins' decision to make public the tapes that led to the dismissal of a FBI mob trial was not an easy one for him to make. In today's New York Times, he explains further his decision to break his pledge of confidentiality to star witness Linda Schiro. He tells the Times he came forward, rather than his colleague Jerry Capeci, because Capeci's entire career hinges on writing about the mob. "I don't face the same kind of jeopardy," Robbins says. "Jerry spends his life reporting on people who commit murders. The last thing in the world he wants to do is to be brought to the stand and asked about his sources." Capeci says the pair felt comfortable breaking their pledge of confidentiality since Schiro had broken it herself by testifying. "It wasn't a question of hurting her by violating the confidentiality," he says. "She had already discussed the material that she told us in confidence."
Prosecutors and defense lawyers met yesterday with the Voice's Tom Robbins to listen to his taped interviews that brought into question the testimony of the star witness in the trial of Lindley DeVecchio, a former FBI agent accused of helping the mob commit murder. By the end of the day, prosecutors said the recordings gave them no choice but to drop the case, the New York Times reports. Robbins, who had interviewed Linda Schiro in 1997, says he struggled with the decision to make the tapes available. "Tell me what else I could have done?" Robbins asks the Daily News. "If you sit silent, then someone could go to jail for life. I chose not to live with that." UPDATE: The Voice has digitized the tapes and made the files available online.
Lawyers for both the defense and prosecution subpoenaed Tom Robbins Tuesday night after the Voice published his story that questions key testimony of a star witness against Lindley DeVecchio, a former FBI agent accused of helping the mob commit murder, the Voice reports. Robbins reported to court this morning with his notes and his lawyer. In 1997, he interviewed Linda Schiro, the former companion of Greg "the Grim Reaper" Scarpa. In those interviews, Schiro contradicted testimony she's given in this trial, when she said DeVecchio had a hand in four mob murders. "The story that Linda Schiro told us in three of four of the murders is diametrically opposed to the testimony she is giving in court," Robbins tells the Daily News. "She's lying to somebody."
New Westminster, which sits about 12 miles from Vancouver in British Columbia, has approved the ban as part of a series of measures to address "livability and enforcement issues" in the city, the Georgia Straight reports. The ordinance, set to take effect Jan. 1, would affect more than 20 of the Straight's boxes. It's "very likely" that the city has violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, says Vancouver media lawyer David F. Sutherland: "There is a constitutional right, not only in the newspaper to distribute by traditional means in public space, but also on the part of readers to receive it in that way." Still, the news box ban isn't quite as draconian as an earlier restriction New Westminster had on the alt-weekly: In 1968, the city banned the Straight across the entire municipality.
Two years ago, the AAN member biweekly attempted to obtain security tapes to confirm that multimillionaire James Leininger was secretly lobbying for school vouchers at the state capitol. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) immediately blocked the release of the tapes, saying it would compromise "homeland security." The Observer appealed to the state attorney general, who agreed that the DPS was obligated to release the videos. But the story doesn't end there. Instead of complying, DPS filed suit in state court, lost, and appealed the court's decision. Now documents obtained by the Observer and posted online show the department has spent more than $160,000 on the suit. "Beyond this being a frivolous lawsuit, what I find a little depressing is the DPS is proceeding like there is this bottomless bag of money from which to draw," Observer editor Jake Bernstein tells the Austin American-Statesman. "It just never occurred to us that they would carry this as far as they have."
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