Tom Christie led the staff of L.A. Weekly in kicking their year-end "Zeitlist" issue into gear. He says "it's surprising how the past year comes into focus" when compiling lists like "6 Reasons Why November 2 Wasn't a Total Gay Political Nightmare." This is the 32nd in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
The cover of the Oct. 13 edition of Riverfront Times features an aerial photograph of 57 naked women arranged to form a peace sign -- an image meant to bring attention to an antiwar arts event in St. Louis, Mo., called "Peace Out!" According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, several businesses have removed copies of the alt-weekly from display shelves -- and at least one did so after a visit from local police. Riverfront Times editor Tom Finkel says, "We put it out there knowing it was a provocative image, but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a police department would take actions to remove the publication from a newsstand."
Tom Grant, editor of the Local Planet Weekly, announces that he's leaving his job and running for mayor of Spokane, Wash. Grant has been a journalist for 23 years, primarily as an investigative television reporter. His reporting helped free more than a dozen innocent people from jail in the mid-1990s, and he recently helped uncover a secret deal in Spokane by which millions in taxpayer dollars were being diverted to the richest family in town. He has been with The Local Planet for two years.
Tom Finkel, editor of City Pages (Twin Cities) until mid-2002, returns to his hometown of St. Louis and to New Times as the new editor of Riverfront Times. He replaces Jim Nesbitt. Before taking the position to Minneapolis, Finkel was managing editor of Miami New Times. "I'm thrilled to be able to move back to my hometown and be a part of the Riverfront Times," Finkel says. He starts March 3.
Long-time General Manager Amy Austin was promoted to publisher of D.C.'s alt-weekly, taking over from Thomas Yoder, who also has responsibilities in Chicago with CP's sister paper. "I think we've gotten to the point now where this is just a mature, strong paper with not only a great person in Amy, but a good management staff under Amy," COO Jane Levine tells the Washington Business Journal.
Publisher Mark Bartel of City Pages (Twin Cities) has fired Editor Tom Finkel because they disagreed on whether the paper should change direction, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Finkel came to City Pages in 1997 from Miami New Times. "I don't want to play this like Tom and I have been butting heads for 4 1/2 years; I really like Tom," Bartel tells the daily. "I just felt like I wanted the editorial to take more chances, to be edgier."
Tom Walsh, editor of the Sacramento News & Review, remembers his time in Afghanistan, when another war was raging. "I remember looking at the Toyota long-bed truck and wondering if this would be where I would die," Walsh writes. Obviously he survived, but others did not come back from the war against the Soviets. One of them was Jim Lindelof, who wrote: “I know this trip is crazy, but for the pictures and the story we’re after, it’s worth the risk; that is, as long as we don’t get killed.” Lindelof was killed on his way out of Afghanistan with what he believed was the first-ever film of a CIA-supplied Stinger missile knocking a Soviet fighter jet out of the sky. His film was never found. Now Walsh sees the journalists pouring back into Afghanistan and wonders if that country will ever know peace.
