On Monday, a federal grand jury returned an 18-count indictment accusing three individuals -- including a woman named Ho -- of operating brothels in the Denver area. Court documents suggest the defendants drummed up business by purchasing ads in Westword. Several hundred miles east in Indianapolis, a woman was arrested this week on prostitution charges after an undercover officer responded to her ad in Nuvo that said, "For An Afternoon So Sweet to Treat, Call Candy." And last month in the nation's capital, the feds seized the assets of a woman accused of running a prostitution ring. According to court documents, the alleged madam spread her ad dollars among several local media outlets, including the Washington City Paper.
In her column this week, Patricia Calhoun writes about her close encounter with Mike Jones, the male prostitute from Denver who recently outed evangelical leader Ted Haggard. Jones told his lurid tale first to Calhoun before ultimately deciding to spill the beans on a local radio show. Not to be outdone, Calhoun reports that Haggard bought "mass quantities" of cock rings and other sexual paraphernalia, according to a former Denver porn-shop clerk.
The winners of the Clarion Awards were recently announced, and Patricia Calhoun, editor of Westword, took first place in the Regular Opinion/Editorial category, small circulation division, for her weekly column. Houston Press Staff Writer Todd Spivak also won for his feature story "Against All Odds" in the small circulation division, and SF Weekly Staff Writer Cristi Hegranes won for her feature story "The Identity Makers" in the large circulation division. Both men and women are eligible for the Clarion Awards, which are presented by The Association for Women in Communications.
"The Real World" is filming its next season in Denver, and according to writer Jared Jacang Maher, the Westword crew "desperately wanted to be a part of this celestial sphere of reality television." They put together a fake cast, added cameramen, producers, and security, and hit the town. Young Denverites in bars reacted as you might expect, hurling insults, mugging for the camera, and hitting on the cast. They even encountered a legitimate MTV celebrity -- Holly Shand from "Road Rules: Latin America." The cast also filmed fake "confessionals" and edited the footage into a four-minute "episode," available for download here in MP4 format.
The 53rd annual Unity Awards in Media, announced May 15, recognize "contributions to continuing standards of excellence in media through efforts that reflect accurate exposure of issues affecting minorities and disabled persons." Westword Editor Patty Calhoun won first place in Editorial Writing for her story "A Piece of the Action," while former Riverfront Times writer Mike Seely (now at Seattle Weekly) topped the Politics category with "The Resurrection of Carl Officer."
WW's Nigel Jaquiss won the Local Circulation Weeklies certificate for exposing a secret deal to sell Portland General Electric. "Jaquiss' reporting is widely credited with scuttling the deal," according to the judges' comments. L.A. Weekly, Fort Worth Weekly, and City Pages (Twin Cities) were also finalists. In the Student Work category, J. David McShane won for his undercover work that revealed U.S. Army recruiters were using improper tactics. McShane initially wrote the piece for his high school newspaper but subsequently expanded it for publication in Westword. The annual awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., recognize outstanding investigative work.
Or perhaps "speculates" would be the proper way to describe Savage's remark, which was made at the beginning of a presentation promoting his most recent book, "The Commitment," at the Tattered Cover book store in Denver. Apparently Mr. Savage Love and the editor of Westword went out for a couple of drinks prior to the speech. Unfortunately, Savage's other slanderous allegations cannot be published on this family-friendly Web site. For the 20-second MP3 version, click here. And if the kids are out of the room, you can listen to the entire speech here.
Foodies at Creative Loafing (Atlanta), Riverfront Times, Westword, L.A. Weekly, East Bay Express, City Pages (Twin Cities), Phoenix New Times, and Houston Press picked up ten of the 21 nominations for which they qualified in the 2006 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards announced today. The complete list is available as a PDF here. Alt-weeklies were particularly dominant in the "Newspaper Writing on Spirits, Wine or Beer" category, in which all three nominees are AAN members. The awards recognize and honor excellence and achievement in the culinary arts.
Editor Pamela White penned a 5,175-word article for the Feb. 2 issue of Boulder Weekly, detailing how an "expert" she had used was actually a fraud. David Race Bannon is the author of Race Against Evil, a supposed former Interpol assassin, and a source for the Weekly's Sept. 9, 2004 story "Suffer the Children" on the international child sex trade. On Jan. 27, Bannon was arrested by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation on suspicion of criminal impersonation, computer crime and criminal attempt to commit theft. White writes, "one quickly realizes that journalism, most especially alternative journalism, entails taking some risks. I don't say that to defend any lack of judgment on my part; it is quite simply a fact." Westword also included a short take on Boulder Weekly and Bannon in its Feb. 2 issue (here, second item).
