Doug Ireland reports in LA Weekly that the new House minority leader carries heavy baggage of money and special interests. Although she's broken the glass-ceiling as the first woman to lead a U.S. legislative party, "she's never been known as a policy innovator and has only a slim record of legislative accomplishment," he writes. In a time when the Democratic Party needs a strong, consistent message, Pelosi is "capable of convenient political pirouettes," he concludes.
Sources tell the Los Angeles Times that federal investigators may be pursuing a legal solution that would actually re-open alternative newsweeklies in Los Angeles and Cleveland, the two cities where Village Voice Media and New Times agreed to close papers and eliminate competition. The federal anti-trust investigation is "unusually fast-paced," The Times' Tim Rutten reports. "Clearly, they've decided to move before the bodies get too cold," an anti-trust attorney tells Rutten.
Shawna Stone doesn't try to hide her transsexuality, and she says a Colorado Springs police detective wanted to try something different with her in exchange for having an old assault charge dropped. John Dicker of the Colorado Springs Independent breaks the wall of silence the police threw up around the case and asks questions about whether the public trust has been betrayed.
Alternative newsweeklies have found myriad ways to team up with competitors for lucrative cross-promotional arrangements. Radio is perhaps the most common partner for alt-weeklies and music events the most frequent vehicle for cooperation, Ann Hinch writes for AAN News. Television and even print, however, have been mined by AAN members “to reach a broader audience and more diverse demographic.”
RedEye and Red Streak both "suck to similar degrees, and both emulate the clichés of youth-oriented marketing: brevity, snark, 'edginess' ... and color," Whet Moser of The Chicago Maroon writes. But their other, more important, failures include not being a substitute for the "brevity and depth" of the Internet or either a viable substitute for or a precursor to reading the regular daily, the University of Chicago columnist writes.
Todd Haynes, director of "Far From Heaven," is a different filmmaker, who's opted to live in a Portland, Ore., Craftsman bungalow amid three lots' worth of verdant vegetation. He's a genuine critics' favorite, a poster boy for independent film. But what really sets Haynes apart from other moviemakers is "a devotion to the cinematic theme of homosexuality that goes beyond merely having fey characters," Byron Beck writes in Willamette Week. "He's made only a handful of films--all critical, if not all commercial, successes. And each of them, in its own way, looks at life through a lavender lens. "
