Cartoonist Ted Rall, whose work appears in several AAN papers, and Katy Reckdahl, a frequent contributor to Gambit Weekly, are among the five winners of the 2002 James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism. The judges say that Rall's "Cartooning with a Conscience" has "increasingly grown irreverent, cutting and iconoclastic, almost at times seeming to eschew humor in favor of mordant portraiture." Reckdahl was recognized for her work on the homeless of New Orleans. "Reckdahl's work challenges the stereotype that the homeless create their own situation because they are criminals, substance abusers or mentally ill," the judges wrote.
Washington Post music critic David Segal rifs on Voice critic Robert Christgau's review of the music that tops the latest Voice critics' poll of pop music, lacerating "the dean of rock criticism's" style. "Well, party people, if this man is the dean we’re going to have to burn down the college," Segal says at the beginning of a live chat session.
The Bay Guardian's Camille T. Taiara looks at a few recent major Bush administration violations of civil rights -- including alleged wiretapping of recalcitrant U.N. diplomats -- that have rocked the European press and been largely ignored at home. "By and large, the media in the United States has totally failed in its obligation to do [monitor the centers of power]. Instead of challenging officialdom, it's become a conduit, a funnel down which officialdom can talk to us," Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent for the U.K.'s Independent newspaper, told her by phone from Beirut.
Monterey County Coast Weekly's Jessica Lyons writes about her little brother being deployed in the National Guard call-ups as the war with Iraq draws ever closer. The boy who kept Pound Puppies on a shelf and turned off a Winnie-the-Pooh lamp to go to sleep at night is now a 22-year-old man who has abandoned his nose ring and found George Bush. "To me, he's still a kid. He's not old enough to fight a war," she writes.
The idea for Letters from Missoula was born of letters from Missoulians addressing the issue of war with Iraq: letters addressed to the editor, letters addressed to politicians and copied to the Independent, and open letters variously addressed to Missoula, to Montana, to the United States, to the world at large. The issue of war brought out the best in letter writers: eloquence, gravity, clarity, and heartfelt emotion. Missoula Independent compiles the best of these letters and presents them as the heart of this week’s newspaper.
