Orlando Weekly writer Deb Berry never had much use for feminism, until she joined the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C., and fell in with a group of people who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. She had to leave her protest sign, "John Ashcroft Is a Sexually Repressed Woman-Hater," behind in a broken-down bus and rely on her voice to respond to anti-abortion protesters who lined the route.
"The source seeking anonymity isn’t 'bucking the system' -- he is the system," David Ehrenstein writes in L.A. Weekly. It's not just the Jayson Blairs of the news industry who deceive readers; it's those reporters who publish dubious information supplied by public relations representatives whose identity and motives remain concealed. In some journalistic circles, shoe-leather reporting has been replaced by a formula Ehrenstein describes this way: "Promise the bosses at your paper that you will get scoops, then cut deals with highly placed individuals to serve as their conduit to the front pages."
The new issue of the Dig looks a lot like The Boston Phoenix, with bylines that are plays on the names of Phoenix staff writers. The Boston Globe Names columnists Carol Beggy and Mark Shanahan report that the parody is the latest episode in a dispute over advertising tactics (third item). Dig publisher Jeff Lawrence has challenged Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich to a one-mile footrace on April 19, with the loser required to make a donation to charity. Mindich hasn't responded.
A writer for the Orlando Weekly column Happytown™ was there when George W. Bush kicked off his re-election campaign in Orlando March 20. Emily Ruff's note-taking looked suspicious to some Republican women, who accused her of being a "dirty hippie" and "terrorist." After Ruff responded with some chants of her own, a security guard escorted her out the door.
Reporters with a great scoop no longer have to sit tight trying not to burst while they wait for the next week’s paper to roll out, freelance writer Charlie Deitch reports for AAN News. It’s possible to publish online 24/7. Several AAN papers are moving away from the static Web site that remains the same for seven days and then has its contents refreshed all at once. A few alt-weeklies post new material daily, and others turn first to the Web whenever they’ve got an especially hot story.
Alt-weeklies may have to stop branding themselves as the papers unafraid to print the word "fuck." Editor Ben Fulton says Salt Lake City Weekly was briefly kicked out of Wal-Mart "because we used the f-bomb in our paper," Glen Warchol reports in The Salt Lake Tribune. City Weekly lost a week's distribution at the chain after a self-identified Christian stumbled upon the word in its pages and complained to the store's regional managers. Wal-Mart let the paper return based on promises of increased vigilance about the use of profanity.
It's an extra challenge to be alternative in a town where marijuana coffee shops and prostitutes posing in brothel windows are the norm. Todd Savage, a former Chicago Reader freelancer, didn't let that daunt him. He debuted his new English-language alt-weekly in the Netherlands' largest city this week. The Reader is a major investor in the enterprise.
John Sugg wasn't too pleased to receive a call from an FBI agent telling him he was "all over the wiretaps" the agency had made of fired University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian. Judging from the cover of Weekly Planet Tampa, Sugg even feels a little defiant; he's not naming any confidential sources. The former editor of the Planet and now senior editor of Creative Loafing Atlanta is on the FBI's tapes because he's been covering the investigation of the accused mastermind of terrorism Al-Arian for eight years. In a story for the Planet, Sugg reflects on disclosures he's made about officials working on the government's case.
Literary publicist Bev Harris sounded the alarm about the integrity of voting software after she discovered that Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., had an ownership share in Election Systems & Software, one of the big three companies that make electronic voting machines. She posted that revelation on her Web site, following it with other evidence that raised doubts about the reliability of vote-counting software. George Howland Jr. describes in Seattle Weekly Harris's evolution from Web advocate to media darling. He questions whether she and her allies will be successful or "like presidential candidate Howard Dean—an online tiger and an analog kitten."
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