The South Florida alt-weekly ran a lengthy cover story this week on the problems facing South Florida's newspapers, and decided that it would only be fair to report on its own struggles as well. Reporter Lisa Rab says that the New Times newsroom staff has shrunk by four (to 13) and its circulation has dropped from around 80,000 to 54,500 over "the past couple of years." She also talks to Village Voice Media president and chief operating officer Scott Tobias, who says there are no plans afoot to make the paper online-only, to sell it or to merge its operations with its sister paper to the south, Miami New Times.
Yesterday we told you about the jury's decision in a case brought against a trio of doctors, in which the plaintiff claimed that the plastic surgeons provided before-and-after photographs of her torso to the Riverfront Times without her permission. The story we linked to noted that one of the doctors testified that the photo miscue wasn't his fault, since Times reporter Kristen Hinman had promised not to use the photos and to let him review the 2006 story before publication (The paper, which denied the doctor's claims, was not named in the suit.) That story, however, didn't explain that Hinman wasn't allowed to testify in the jury's presence, due to what Times editor Tom Finkel calls a "bizarre" mid-trial ruling that said doing so would constitute "unfair surprise" and deprive the doctors of a fair trial. The irony, of course, is that the doctor in question was allowed to testify in front of jurors, and he "fed the jury two baldfaced lies" about the alt-weekly, Finkel writes.
A federal jury has awarded $100,000 to "Jane Doe," a cosmetic surgery patient who claimed that doctors provided before-and-after photographs of her torso without her permission to illustrate a 2006 Riverfront Times story. The woman's lawyers were seeking millions of dollars for compensatory damages alone, but one juror says the jury awarded only enough to pay something to her lawyers and to allow for her hotel and travel expenses. The St. Louis alt-weekly was not named in the woman's suit. However, one of the doctors being sued testified that Times reporter Kristen Hinman promised not to use the photos and to let him review the article before publication, charges that Hinman and her editor deny.
After Westword started taking applications for a position reviewing the Denver area's medical marijuana dispensaries, Phoenix New Times decided it would "do the same regarding the Valley's drug of choice" -- meth. "The column will focus on a few things: Quality of the drug, of course, but also the safety of users," James King writes. "We want to know where to find quality meth that won't kill you right away."
The Association of Food Journalists last week named the winners of its 2009 Awards Competition at a banquet in New Orleans. Seattle Weekly's Jonathan Kauffman won first place for Best Newspaper Restaurant Criticism and Creative Loafing (Atlanta)'s Besha Rodell took home first for Best Newspaper Food Feature. (Riverfront Times' Kristen Hinman took third in that category.) Kauffman's victory marks the fourth year in a row that a Village Voice Media paper has won the Best Newspaper Restaurant Criticism category.
The series debuts here on AAN.org this Friday, Sept. 25, with investigative reporting winner John Dickerson discussing his Phoenix New Times series "Prescription for Disaster" with New Times managing editor Amy Silverman. The conversation, which will begin at 3 pm EST, will be moderated by Folio Weekly editor Anne Schindler.
Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach each won eight total awards in the Florida Press Club's 2009 Excellence in Journalism contest. Miami took home first-place honors in the General News, Light Feature Writing, Minority News and Religion Writing categories, while Broward placed first in the Blog Writing, Criticism, Health Writing and Sports Feature Writing categories. However, blog winner Bob Norman points out that the press club put all of the alt-weeklies' nonblog entries in Class D, the lowest category in the contest. "The last time they did this a few years ago, we refused to accept our awards (yeah, we're arrogant like that)," Norman writes. "Now they've gone off and done it again. We've been judged over the years in Category A, where we belong, all the way down to D. It's an issue that needs to be ironed out beforehand."
Bay, who is best known for big-budget action flicks like Transformers and Armageddon, is working on Pain & Gain, a feature he is adapting from a series of Miami New Times stories on steroid-abusing bodybuilders who become criminals. According to an update on Bay's official website over the weekend, the film "is looking very possible."
AAN News has just received a copy of Da Capo's Best Food Writing 2009, and it is chock full of alt-weekly talent. Included in the collection are stories from City Pages' Rachel Hutton ("Spam: It's Not Just for Inboxes Anymore"), New Times Broward-Palm Beach's John Linn ("Highway to Hog Heaven"), SF Weekly's Peter Jamison ("Out of the Wild"), The Stranger's Bethany Jean Clement ("The Beauty of the Beast"), Washington City Paper's Tim Carman ("How Not to Hire a Chef"), and Westword's Jason Sheehan ("The Last of the Great $10 Steaks"). The book also includes a selection from Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh's book on oysters, and is slated to be released this fall.
Dickerson, whose work for Phoenix New Times won him national recognition, recently left journalism to focus on his other vocation: being a pastor. "It really came down to there were not enough hours in the week to minister to people the way I wanted and to do journalism," Dickerson tells the Prescott, Ariz., Daily Courier. New Times managing editor Amy Silverman says the traits that led Dickerson to religious leadership were the same ones that made him a good reporter. "I believe it's the sincerity and goodness that led him to the clergy that make him such a terrific investigative reporter," she says.
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