The new owner of the Knoxville, Tenn., alternative newsweekly has replaced two staff members after telling AAN News in May that he had no plans for staff changes. Brian Conley, a developer, has named an employee of his real estate firm managing editor and replaced the paper's art director with an award- winning advertising designer, who will direct a redesign.
Twelve years ago, Christopher Hitchens was Dennis Perrin's friend and mentor, offering advice on his writing and holding court at the large dining room table in his D.C. apartment. But somewhere along the way the "kind and generous" author and "former socialist" went wrong, says Perrin: "I can barely read him anymore. His (recent pieces) are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead." What caused Hitch's transformation? Perrin says it was Bill Clinton, 9/11 and life inside the Beltway.
Lizzie Seagle has mathematicians in a tizzy over her method for solving the dreaded quadratic equation. "That’s frickin' amazing," her math teacher, Jennifer Newman, said when Seagle told struggling class mates her simple method for solving the knotty equations. The "Lizzie method" may become the new standard for factoring quadratics, but the real Lizzie says she more of a "drama person" than a math whiz, Ronit Feldman writes in Metro Times.
Glenn Rice, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, has resigned as treasurer of the National Association of Black Journalists after The Pitch revealed a year-old discipline procedure for plagiarism, the Associated Press reports in a story carried by the Star. Rice had been treasurer of the association for four years and his term was one month from ending. The Pitch last week reported that Rice had been reassigned after he used copy from another daily paper in a concert review.
Boston Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy looks at 10 outstanding attempts to undermine our personal freedoms and civil liberties. The list of government abuses of freedom of speech is especially chilling as Attorney General John Ashcroft pushes for Patriot Act II, "which would give the government even greater powers to snoop into what we say, what we read, and what we think," Kennedy writes.
More Americans are enjoying sports, but the increase is largely attributable to participation in fantasy leagues. Salt Lake City Weekly's Shane McCommon looks at whether this has been good -- for us, or for the games. "Explaining fantasy sports to the uninitiated is a bit like dissecting a religious ceremony," he writes. "Unless you go through the baptism and actually play a season of rotisserie baseball, it will forever remain a dark secret contained in the Mason-esque halls of Fantasydom."
Executive Editor John Yarmuth confirms to a LEO columnist that an acquisition of the Louisville, Ky., alternative is being discussed. Writer Tom Peterson says LEO’s suitors reportedly have an affection — rather than a formula — for operating alternative weeklies. "But as LEO staffers await news, the questions and the uncertainty fly, wafting through the offices, leaking from behind closed office doors and in the wake of hushed conversations," he writes. "Will it happen, and if it does, what will be different?"
