Joe Loya ripped off dozens of banks in the late '80s, netting about $250,000. Now Loya, dubbed the "Beirut Bandit" because of his dark complexion, has a book deal and a starring role in his own show, Justin Berton writes in East Bay Express. "Loya is a well-read sophisticate, but he's also an ex-con who can walk up to a stranger on the street and call him 'homeboy' without sounding like a guidance counselor," Berton says.
Renatta Frazier, a rookie Springfield police officer, left the force under a cloud because of her alleged failure to prevent the rape of the daughter of a fellow officer. Dusty Rhodes looks into the resignation and finds more questions than answers. Only the third black female ever to join the Springfield, Ill., police force, Frazier admits she never tried to "be invisible," as she was advised. Instead, Rhodes describes her as alternately "frank, funny and tenderhearted," or, if you were inclined against her, "abrasive, irreverent and lacking in military bearing." Associate Publisher Sharon Whalen tells AAN News the story "made the city shake" and revealed that the alleged rape had happened before the call to police was even made.
Creative Loafing Atlanta's Mara Shalhoup talks to six women victimized by one shady real-estate operator, who allegedly falsified their mortgage applications and helped them buy homes they couldn't afford. These six cases are only the tip of the iceberg of mortgage fraud and identity theft across America. "Nationwide, the FBI estimates that mortgage fraud has increased by 25 percent in the past year alone -- and that up to 15 percent of loan applications contain false information," she reports.
"The RedEye will be the newspaper equivalent of the middle-aged bald guy with a ponytail," Richard Karpel, executive director of AAN, tells Shirley Leung, a Wall Street Journal reporter. Leung looks at the precipitous flight of younger readers from daily newspapers and the checkered history of their attempts to recapture them. Chicago Reader Editor Alison True questions the entire strategy of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, which both launched youth-oriented weekday tabloids this week, RedEye and Red Streak, respectively. "Younger readers don't pick up a daily, so let's give them a daily?" True asks.
"When the news came, we threw out everything we'd planned for this week's issue and spent an hour or so sitting around a conference table watching the grim details accrue on TV," Steve Perry, editor of City Pages (Twin Cities) writes in an introduction to an entire issue devoted to the memory of Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minnesota. "We talked about people we might interview, stories we might write; we talked about our own memories and impressions of Paul Wellstone. And in the end we decided the worthiest thing we could do was simply to find some of the many folks whose paths had crossed his during a life devoted to fighting other people's battles, and let them tell their stories."
