About 120 religious activists turned out last week to protest a "blasphemous" cartoon published in the Chicago Reader, reports The Illinois Leader, which bills itself "Illinois' Conservative News Source." The cartoon in question implied immoral behavior by the Virgin Mary, the pope and Jesus, the newspaper says.
Tele-Publishing International has reassured clients that money collected for online personals by bankrupt MCI should be distributed soon, Editor & Publisher reports. Many alternative newsweeklies use 900 numbers for voice personal ads. MCI will soon be the sole national carrier billing and collecting for these services.
According to no less an authority than the 2000 census, Miami is now the poorest big city in America. In a two-part series of stories that begins this week, Miami New Times' writers and editors explore Miami's fascinating shadow economy, a thriving black-market system that makes it possible to live one's life entirely off the books. They explain how public-housing fiascos have turned neighborhoods into ghost towns, with a crippling effect on the small businesses that depended on the residents -- even if those residents happened to be drug dealers.
Sarah Goodyear writes in The Village Voice about her short career as an FBI informant. She turned in a talkative Brooklyn cabbie, an Egyptian, who'd warned her in July 2001 that something bad was going to happen to America, even mentioning Osama bin Laden. The friendly accused doesn't hold his interrogation against her, and he wasn't detained, but Goodyear still feels the taint of her brush with TIPS.
How big a danger to our planet does Saddam Hussein really pose? Or George Bush? Various perspectives on what could be America’s latest battleground are explored in L.A. Weekly's report on Iraq. Two former weapons inspectors give their wildly different views on Saddam: Greg Goldin interviews Terence Taylor, chief U.N. weapons inspector in 1997,who sees a grave threat. Jon Wiener hears opposite views from Scott Ritter, a senior inspector from 1991 to 1997. Richard Falk makes the argument against the war; Ian Williams takes on the anti-war movement. Marc B. Haefele attends an L.A. gathering of World Federalists who preach a unified world theory. And Christine Pelisek shares the scant military records of those who want a war.
Eric Broder, managing editor at the Cleveland Free Times, which turns 10 this week, remembers a time when the paper could hardly fill ad space. "The issue is 24 pages, consisting mainly of editorial. You don't want that. You want ads in there, and plenty of 'em. But this was the first issue. It's tough enough to sell ad space for a publication, and tougher yet for one that doesn't exist." Broder reflects on the last decade of a paper that was one business deal away from never happening.
Media critic Michael Anft announces he is ending his 20-year on-and-off relationship with Baltimore City Paper and retiring "to flip through heretofore-unread copies of The New Yorker and Harper's." Anft takes a parting shot at "the mostly uninspired local product we unfortunate viewers/readers/listeners have spewed at us."
The mainstream media in the United States has ignored wire service and European newspaper coverage of long-standing plans to run an oil pipeline from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan, Ted Rall reports in an exclusive article on Philadelphia City Paper's Web site. "The 'war on terrorism' was less about fighting terrorism, or finding the perpetrators of 9-11, than about bombing Afghanistan" to secure a stable route for the pipeline, Rall writes.
Illinois Times has hired Patrick Arden, former managing editor of the Chicago Reader, as editor. The paper has also moved to a new address, redesigned its cover, consolidated entertainment listings, and changed its tag line. “The capital city’s newsweekly” expects fourth-quarter performance to be strong, says Associate Publisher Sharon Whalen.
