Village Voice CEO David Schneiderman announces that former Seattle Weekly Editor-in-Chief Knute "Skip" Berger will rejoin the paper this week after a two-year "sabbatical," replacing Audrey Van Buskirk. Schneiderman also names 16-year Seattle Times vet Chuck Taylor as managing editor. Van Buskirk had been hired in Nov. 2000 to replace Berger.
Sometime around two in the morning of Dec. 17, 2001, 27-year- old Christian Longo allegedly killed his wife and three children, dumped their bodies into the river on the outskirts of tiny Waldport, Ore., and headed for the Mexican Riviera for a fun-filled vacation. In the conclusion of his two-part series in Willamette Week, Carlton Smith asks why a young father would deliberately kill his own family, and why law enforcement authorities failed repeatedly to act after Longo's nationwide crime spree gave them plenty of chances to stop him.
Diane Wilson's hunger strike in protest of Union Carbide Corp.'s legacies of pollution and corporate callousness has been joined by hundreds of people worldwide. Lisa Sorg, news editor of the San Antonio Current, looks at the Texas woman's protest and how it extends beyond the current events in Bhopal, India, where more than 8,000 people died in a 1984 chemical leak. The issues of environmental destruction and its human toll, corporate influence and its absence of accountability, ties Bhopal to Seadrift, Texas, and to every community that is at the mercy of contaminating industries.
In yet more New Times satire, (most) readers give Phoenix New Times big ups for its parody of the Arizona Republic's recent redesign. Even a Republic staffer who asked not to be named applauded the spoof. "As one of the worker bees who's had to live through it, it was nice to see what most of us in the newsroom have been waiting for you to do."
