Sue O’Connell and Jeff Coakley yesterday acquired the largest gay-and-lesbian newspaper in New England and a Boston neighborhood paper, according to Dan Kennedy. Coakley was the Phoenix’s director of classified advertising in the mid ’90s; O'Connell served two tours of duty as the paper's entertainment sales manager before leaving in 1998 to become associate publisher of Bay Windows, a 22,000- circulation publication targeting the region's GLBT community.
In a desperate bid to attract young readers "who have been deserting daily newspapers in droves and driving news executives to distraction," mainstream media companies "are churning out ... easy-to- read publications that are light on serious journalism, heavy on the partying scene, and, for the most part, free," reports Mark Jurkowitz. "I think it's a silly strategy because it's all about what they're putting out in daily papers that's driving [young] readers away,'' Nashville Scene's Albie Del Favero tells Jurkowitz. ''Daily newspapers in general write in a style that is not at all appealing to young readers.''
Army Spc. Justin Hebert was the 52nd American soldier killed in Iraq since President Bush declared the war over on May 1 and the first combat fatality of this war from the state of Washington. Friends, family and veterans bade him farewell in the quiet valley where he was born and raised, and then he was buried in one of the special caskets reserved just for soldiers. "As they laid Justin Hebert to rest, it was hard to square the death of the 20-year-old with what we know now about the invasion of Iraq," Rick Anderson writes in Seattle Weekly.
Way out in West Texas, near the small town of Iraan, north of the Fourmile Draw and and south of the Texas Pecos Trail, the wind blows mightily. There, at the Desert Sky Wind Farm, 107 turbines jut 328 feet above the mesa and catch the wind as it rolls off the Barilla and Del Norte mountain ranges. The wind belongs to no one, but its power belongs to San Antonio: Desert Sky generates 160 megawatts of electricity and City Public Service buys it -- enough to power about 40,000 homes each year. San Antonio Current News Editor Lisa Sorg looks at the power of the Texas wind.
If you learn one thing from same-sex parents, it’s that gay and straight families are pretty similar, Mairi Hennessy writes in Reno News & Review. The 2000 census tallied more than 600,000 same-sex U.S. households, 55 percent with children. Conservative Nevada now ranks eighth in the nation in the number of households headed by gay or lesbian couples. Hennessy talks to some of those couples about their trials and triumphs, and the simple joys of raising children.
Point-of-view reporting. A hip, irreverent voice. In-depth coverage of local underdogs. And, of course, free circulation. New York Sports Express applies the elements of alternative journalism to create a new kind of paper: the local sports weekly. "No one else has done it -- and I like the action of creating new product," says President and Publisher Chuck Coletti. The paper's goal, says Editor Spike Vrusho, is "just to keep the way-too-serious sports fans laughing."
