Orlando Sentinel says it will sue its alternative weekly competitor if it publishes the names of Sentinel "replacement workers" who may take over the jobs of unionized Baltimore Sun employees, who are threatening to strike. Both dailies are owned by the Tribune Co. Lawyers for the Sentinel argue that "the only purpose" for publishing the names is “to expose (the strikebreaking workers') families to harassment from people in Central Florida" and claim that such publication would create a "palpable threat of harm to those employees and their families." Weekly Editor Bob Whitby responds, "Trying to silence reporting on a legitimate story is the worst form of corporate behavior" and calls the Sentinel's threats "nothing short of disgraceful."
"Who owns REI?" the nation's largest recreational outfitter with 66 stores in 24 states, asks Seattle freelancer Andy Ryan, who once owned his own outdoor gear store. "It can't be the members. They aren't even privy to what the co-op's executives earn," Ryan, an REI member, writes in Seattle Weekly, as he takes off on a quest for answers about the Seattle-based co-op's operations.
Bob Kittle, editorial page editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, claims he had never seen the 10-month-old AAN paper when he learned CityBeat Editor David Rolland would be appearing on a local NPR "Editor's Roundtable" alongside him. Directed to CityBeat’s Web site, Kittle was shocked to find profanity -- so shocked, in fact, that he tried unsuccessfully to get Rolland kicked off the radio program, on which Kittle is a regular pundit. "CityBeat is not journalism. It’s trash," Kittle wrote in a letter to radio station KPBS. In this week’s CityBeat, Rolland responds that Kittle’s real intent was to "limit the range of debate" in San Diego, which he says, "has been too narrow ... for too long."
Sacramento rolls out the red carpet for a "global food security" summit, as protesters from around the country are laying plans of their own. Ron Curran looks at the first-ever international Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, which is expected to back global trade in irradiated and genetically modified food. It's also the first World Trade Organization-related meeting in North America since 1999’s confrontational Seattle Ministerial Conference, where police used tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters, and ultimately a curfew shut down the city.
Dallas Observer won two first place awards in the 2003 Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards, and The Village Voice and Phoenix New Times each took one. East Bay Express won second place in the General Excellence category for papers with circulations 50,001 to 100,000, and New Times papers were finalists in nine other categories.
