Geri L. Dreiling of the Riverfront Times receives a certificate of merit from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) for a story she did on sexual harassment and discrimination at Texas-based Rent-A-Center.
Eli Sanders reports from the Gaza Strip for The Stranger on the death of Rachel Corrie -- Evergreen student, anarchist, activist, and accidental martyr. The Olympia, Wash., native was defending the house of an Arab doctor when she was killed by one of the giant armored Israeli bulldozers that people here say terrorize them.
Laurie David is not your typical "Think Globally, Act Locally" sort of environmentalist. Her husband, Larry David, co-created Seinfeld, for one thing, and now stars in his own series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. And David herself travels in privileged Hollywood circles. But she flips their good fortune on its head, mining her connections to actors, producers and movie execs to advance populist environmental campaigns. She’s the engine behind the Detroit Project and its controversial anti-SUV ads, and without her, one Santa Monica dealership would not be leading the country in sales of Toyota’s gas/electric hybrid, the Prius. LA Weekly's Deborah Vankin tells us how David puts celebrity activism in the driver’s seat.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan spurned him, but that didn't stop Maryland-based Royall Jenkins from believing he was Allah. Jenkins might have been unwelcome at the Chicago headquarters of the Nation of Islam, but he found streets paved with gullibility in Kansas City, Kansas. There, his daughter began recruiting members to open up friendly businesses like Your Diner, Your Supermarket, Your Service Station and Your Colonic Center in a forgotten slum. The United Nation of Islam -- whose impeccably dressed members possessed an almost otherworldly politeness -- earned praise from city officials and newspaper columnists. But as Pitch staff writer Allie Johnson discovered, a funny thing happened on the way to Heaven. Royall Jenkins started acquiring wives. Recruits began turning over their homes and property to the United Nation of Islam. Members' children ended up in a school where the principal had only a sixth-grade education. One child died under suspicious circumstances. And Allah's daughter, the Mother of Civilization, started coming to her senses.
Southland Publishing's David Comden announces that his company successfully bid for the New Times LA assets that were put up for sale in the wake of the consent decree signed by New Times after a Department. of Justice investigation of the paper's closure. According to Comden, Southland, which owns AAN members Pasadena Weekly and Ventura County Reporter as well as applying paper San Diego CityBeat, "plans to open two (Los Angeles) newsweeklies, CityBeat LA and ValleyBeat, by summer."
The meaning of the term "hoosier" has been a matter of debate for centuries. And it seems the more the word is studied, the muddier its definition becomes. "It's absolutely lost any derogatory meaning in Indiana," says Indiana University librarian Jeffrey Graf. St. Louis vernacular suggests otherwise where the term is synonymous with "cheap beer, fast cars and fat girls." Author Thomas E. Murray notes that in St. Louis, "hoosier" occupies "the honored position of being the city's No. 1 term of derogation." The Riverfront Times' Mike Seely dissects the term -- both in St. Louis and in Indiana -- and offers that there may be a little bit of hoosier in all of us, in spite of the term's apparent trashy underpinnings.
