How did Texas slaughterhouses operate illegally for the past quarter-century without getting caught? Maybe no one in the state government knew that the agricultural code forbids horse slaughter. Or perhaps the industry's profits — which benefited not only the plants and buyers, but also several state agencies and Texas universities — were enough that it paid to look the other way. Editor Lisa Sorg looks at horse slaughter practices in Texas in a two-part series.
Seven years ago, conservative Roman Catholic activist Steven Brady began a crusade to root out priests involved in sexual scandal. Operating from his pizza parlor in rural Petersburg, Ill., Brady’s group, Roman Catholic Faithful, conducted Internet and direct-mail campaigns to oust priests in dioceses from Dallas to South Africa. Critics say Brady goes on the attack with scant evidence, but he’s caught some priests through their own personal ads. "He has no natural ability to identify or interpret facts," admits one supporter. "However, he is such an idiot that I'm sure God is leading him." In a two-part series, Illinois Times’ Pete Sherman talks to Brady about RCF’s self-professed mission to fight "corruption within the Catholic hierarchy." Brady is blunt: "We are in the business of destroying lives, but lives that need destroying."
In an area as large as Los Angeles, there are plenty of opportunities to serve niches, says Group Publisher David Comden, who recently launched two new weeklies in the market. Southland has assembled an all-star cast of alternative journalism veterans at LA CityBEAT and ValleyBEAT, and with the company's paper in Pasadena, now circulates 140,000 papers each week in the L.A. basin. Comden says he'll offer low-price options to advertisers and an "alternative to the alternative" for LA's younger readers.
Two California pastors who run XXXchurch, "the No. 1 Christian anti-porn site on the Web," have enlisted a midget in their crusade against self abuse. In a TV commercial playing on cable television, they show "Eddie the Midget" struggling in everyday life with his small stature before a narrator intones, "If only someone had warned Eddie that porn would STUNT HIS GROWTH!" Their next commercial shows kittens frolicking about before the narrator says, "Did you know that every time someone masturbates, God kills a kitten?"
The Detroit Free Press looks at the brawl between AAN-member Metro Times and upstart Real Detroit Weekly. In this corner, Metro Times -- 20 years old and sophisticated, laden with narrative journalism, investigative stories, in-depth arts and music criticism, a paper for "people who read without moving their lips," Editor Jeremy Voas tells the daily. In the other, the challenger Real Detroit -- "all style and flash and talking trash," and unabashedly giving advertisers favorable coverage. Readers -- and advertisers -- will determine the winner, but Real Detroit has carved out a niche that's giving it about half the readership of the dominant Times, freelancer Christopher Walton reports.
