Gail Collins, editorial page editor of The New York Times; best-selling author and New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean; NPR commentator Sarah Vowell; satirist Neal Pollack; and Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company, all share one thing -- stints at alternative newsweeklies early in their careers. These former alt-weekly staffers talk with AAN News about success in the big leagues and reflect on their roots and the state of the alt-weekly industry. And for good measure, musician-turned-alt-weekly-art-director Victor Krummenacher also shares his experiences with fame and the alternative newsweeklies that covered him.
Weekly Planet (Tampa) has laid off three editorial staffers -- News Editor Francis X. Gilpin and staff writers Trevor Aaronson and Rochelle Renford -- citing flat revenue and a desire to shift focus from political to cultural coverage, the St. Petersburgh Times reports. Neil Skene, senior vice president, group publisher, of the Planet's parent company, Creative Loafing, says the weekly will now use freelance writers for political coverage.
This is not just a sartorial question in Jefferson Parish, La., where two prosecutors have been wearing their hand-painted neckties showing a hangman's noose and a grim reaper during capital punishment trials. After helping The New York Times break the story of the dubious prosecutorial neckwear, Katy Reckdahl goes deep into issues of lingering racism and the scars of history in Louisiana.
Orange County’s Pink Pistols are all for peace, love and understanding among straights and gays. Meantime, they’re taking target practice, and the motto of the national organization is "Armed gays don’t get bashed." Members -- gay, lesbian and straight -- want to avoid victimization and find the Pink Pistols more to their taste than the NRA. "The point is bullies might be far less inclined to screw with someone who’s packing," Steve Lowery writes in OC Weekly.
The LA Weekly's Nancy Updike reports on the rise and fall of one more fad diet -- the no-fuss Body Solutions plan. "Eat whatever you want, don't worry about exercising, and then just stop eating and drinking three hours before bed and take one tablespoonful of Body Solutions' Evening Weight Loss Formula with a glass of water right before you go to sleep. Watch the pounds melt off." Shortly after Updike's first interview with the company's main researcher, Body Solutions was bankrupt and being sued by the Federal Trade Commission. The story is part of LA Weekly's "Body Politic," a five-story package on body image.
New York-based Avalon Equity Partners is now the majority owner of both the New York Press and Window Media, which operates a number of gay weeklies, including the New York Blade News and the Washington Blade. Cynthia Cotts of The Village Voice writes that the gay media worries about Avalon's ownership, fearing a private equity company with no gay credentials will undermine the integrity of their product. David W. Unger, co-founder and managing partner of Avalon, insists that neither the Press nor the gay publications will lose their identities simply by being connected through a mutual investor. Unger says the Press should make money "with just a little hands-on management."
