That's what a source told Boston Phoenix media critic Mark Jurkowitz after Village Voice Media's new Executive Editor Michael Lacey met with "about 30 staffers" in New York on Feb. 1. "This industry has been afflicted by this kind of shut-in mentality," Lacey told Jurkowitz. "Are people prepared to receive the message? There were a lot of people [at that meeting] who didn't like what I said." One of them was media columnist Sydney Schanberg, who said Lacey's "language was adversarial and pugnacious. ... He played the bully. I respond terribly to bullies." Voice columnist Nat Hentoff didn't respond well either, especially when Lacey criticized one of his columns and complained about "reporting that was stenography." But Hentoff decided not to resign because he's waiting to see how Lacey treats his work. Jurkowitz also covered the recent resignation of the editorial staff at the New York Press and interpreted the "turmoil" at both papers as "a sure indicator that the alt-weekly business ... is struggling for relevance in an increasingly fragmented marketplace."
Harry Siegel, one of four editorial staffers who resigned from New York Press last week, participated in a discussion of the Muhammad cartoons with Mike Luckovich, an editorial cartoonist, and Jim Warren, deputy managing editor of The Chicago Tribune (which did not run the cartoons). Siegel called the cartoons "very amateurish and very vile" before arguing that "it seems Orwellian to talk about this at such length without showing the images." Siegel also tangled briefly with Warren, who asserted that "characterizing the cartoons in great detail" was sufficient to cover the story.
The impetus behind the walkout was apparently a refusal by the newspaper's publishers to print the Danish cartoons that caricature Muhammad and have caused protests and riots in several countries. In an e-mail to the New York Observer, editor in chief Harry Siegel explained that "the editorial group -- consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah ... have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running." Siegel went on to say that he had long dreamed of running the Press, thought that the staff had "come quite a ways in only a few months towards restoring the paper's tarnished editorial reputation and credibility," and hoped "that under new ownership and leadership it can again be an invaluable read for all good Gothamites."
AAN members are among the media outlets that have become targets of form e-mails generated by RightMarch.com. The messages forcefully state, "in solidarity with the people of free Europe and in support of the concept of freedom of the press, you need to PUBLISH the Danish cartoons." Alt-weekly editors, however, suggest that their only response will be to use the "delete" button.
Harvey Silverglate, who is also a civil rights attorney, appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Dec. 11 to discuss National Security Agency leaks. At first the conversation was surprisingly civil, with Silverglate even ribbing O'Reilly by saying, "Fair and balanced, that's my motto." Silverglate mentioned his recent Phoenix article suggesting that New York Times staff could be indicted for publishing the domestic wiretapping story: he told O'Reilly, "I received more phone calls and e-mail, hostile e-mail, about that from my friends in the news media saying, 'Don't give the Department of Justice any ideas!'" However, as discussion turned to whether exposing the wiretapping could have undermined the war on terror, the segment ended with a brief shouting match. A summary of Silverglate's appearance can be found on O'Reilly's Web site.
Marc Desilets, the senior classified sales representative at Tucson Weekly, collected his AAN CAN prize and traveled to New York City over the Thanksgiving holiday. Desilets won the three-night trip for two by selling $43,095 in national ads during the summer 2005 AAN CAN contest.
The Nov. 16 issue of the Press contains a letter from its editors drolly scolding the editors of the Times. Apparently, a Nov. 6 article in the Times referenced the Press's endorsement of a mayoral candidate but missed the joke. The Press editors note, "Maybe The New York Times sees nothing suspicious or even funny when an alternative weekly writes, 'We're honored to add our name to this list [of endorsements], and offer the all-important escort-seeking demographic.'"
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