Alisa Solomon emerged from a subway stop near the World Trade Center seconds before its second tower was struck by a plane. "(W)e knew in our bellies that America was changed forever," she writes in the Village Voice online report. "Arms, legs. Parts of people. They were falling on my head," said an administrative assistant who was about to enter the WTC when the first plane hit.
Columbia Journalism Review delves into newsroom morale in its latest issue. Among the views presented are two from alternative newsweeklies. Former TV reporter Tom Grant is positively euphoric about his new job at The Local Planet Weekly . Meanwhile, over at East Bay Express, there's quite a different outlook.
Timothy Schaffert’s first novel is to be published by BlueHen, a new literary division of publishing giant Penguin Putnam, in June 2002. The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters is about sisters damaged by abandonment. Schaffert, managing editor of the Omaha Reader says his day job is like a baby squalling in the next room, "a distraction from creativity, certainly, but an important distraction."
The Local Planet of Spokane, Wash., which was approved for AAN membership last month in New Orleans, is changing its name to The Local Planet Weekly. President and Co-Publisher Matthew Spaur credits Folio Weekly Publisher Sam Taylor for the suggestion: “He said it would add $100,000 to our value. I’m still waiting for the check,” Spaur jokes in a news release posted on the AAN Web site.
After playing the Village Voice's Siren Music Festival with his band, Jazz Beard Jr., R. James Bagget says he was shocked at Amy Phillips' "sarcastic tone and lack of genuine enthusiasm" in her preview of the event that was published in the Voice. "(I)t is profoundly ironic that one of the Voice's main competitors (Time Out) ran a much larger and more laudatory preview," he writes in his letter-to-the-editor.
Dennis Freeland, the sports writer — and former editor — of the Memphis Flyer has been diagnosed with brain cancer, but this grim news has not robbed him of his wit or his friends, just his future, writes Geoff Calkins, a sports columnist for The Commercial Appeal.
In its summer issue, Columbia Journalism Review tenders "laurels" to three AAN members – The Village Voice, the Nashville Scene, and Tampa’s Weekly Planet – for “good old-fashioned criticism of the big boys in town.” The journalism-mag crowns the beneficiaries with a left-handed compliment: “Who says the alternative press has sold its birthright for a mess of personal ads and restaurant reviews?”
