In a letter to the Los Angeles Times responding to a column written by media critic David Shaw, AAN Executive Director Richard Karpel says Shaw's characterization of the alternative newsweekly business "is both inaccurate and misleading." Countering Shaw's assertions, Karpel claims AAN papers "are as unfettered as they ever were and far more independent than their competitors in the mainstream press."
Disproportionately infected, blacks confront the reality that AIDS is no longer a white, gay disease. Seattle Weekly's Nina Shapiro talks to African-Americans with the virus and looks at the latest developments in the deadly plague. Dr. Helene Gayle, former head of CDC's AIDS program, tells Shapiro the epidemic was simply going where epidemics usually go: into "communities of the disenfranchised" -- those with poor access to health care, high rates of drug use, and other social burdens that fuel disease.
Washington City Paper hasn't covered the D.C. area sniper attacks -- not one word, a decision Washington City Paper Editor Eric Wemple tells Philadelphia Weekly's Steve Volk he agonizes about every day. "We are in no position to do" hard news, especially outside the District, Wemple tells Volk. Even though he can post breaking news on the paper's Web site, he says "readers aren't trained to go to our Web site for a 34-car pileup on the Beltway."
Waiters and waitresses are at the mercy of their customers' egos, whims and moods, but find hideous ways to avenge themselves. Joey Sweeney collects some of their horror stories in Philadelphia Weekly. Restaurant servers "by and large, live the lives that most of us wish we had the balls for. They're actors. They're painters. They're in bands. They're in love. And maybe the rest of us are just jealous of that," Sweeney writes. They give Sweeney the dish on their worst customers ever and how they struck back.
Marc Keyser, a friendly neighborhood anti-terrorism activist, has been telling Elk Grove residents it’s easy to poison the water supply, Chrisanne Beckner writes in Sacramento News & Review. Local officials say he’s all wet. "Some water officials have even decided that Keyser is so intent on distributing ever more refined plans for attacking the system that he must not be as interested in improving water security as he is in collecting donations door to door," she writes.
