Spokane, Wash., City Councilman Steve Eugster has dropped a libel suit against The Local Planet Weekly's parent company. He claimed the Local Planet defamed him in a column that suggested he followed no law but his own and depicted him with a pitchfork and horns.
Using a variation of the environmental racism argument, the Southern Ute tribe fights for removal of toxic waste from an ancient burial ground. Salt Lake City Weekly's John F. Harrington examines the principle of shundahai, a Shoshone belief in peace and harmony with all creation, and now Western tribes are using it to assert legal rights that could force the government to protect their sacred beliefs.
The unwritten law in Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas's office is not to talk to OC Weekly. R. Scott Moxley says that's because the Weekly writes the ugly truth about the DA's incompetence and wasteful spending of taxpayer money. On the other hand, "Newspapers that routinely marble their DA stories with ham-fisted flatteries or merely ignore embarrassing facts about Rackauckas are rewarded with insider scoops and exclusives on major breaking crime stories," Moxley says.
In its second issue since reopening after a seven-month closure, Cleveland Free Times writes a snarling cover story on the finances of its rival Cleveland Scene and its parent, New Times. The story by Editor David Eden charges that the Scene "is living on life support and is awaiting its day of reckoning."
The gritty new HBO series "The Wire" draws its inspiration from the mean streets of Baltimore, and residents of those streets have decidedly mixed emotions about the portrayal. Baltimore City Paper's Bret McCabe talks to creator David Simon about Baltimore, the new season of the series, his critics in city government, his former bosses at The Sun, and the decline of the working stiff.