"That we keep finding incompetence at The Tennessean is apparently no longer news," says Editor Bruce Dobie, telling the Scene's readers that 13 years of "Desperately Seeking the News" is enough. The column had become "far too formulaic and predictable," Dobie complains. "Bruce is wrong, as editors often are," argues media columnist Henry Walker, who nevertheless is forced to admit, "What the editor giveth, He can taketh away."
The vast majority of the 15,000 porn titles released in the U.S. every year are amateur productions. Gonzo, anal, oral, facial, gangbang, bukkake, black-on-black, interracial, all-Asian, girl-on-girl, compilation tapes, Internet sites -- the sheer size of America's amateur pornopalooza is overwhelming. To get a closer look, The Stranger's Bradley Steinbacher spends a few hours in a hotel room watching amateur porn entreprenuer Jeff Harder shoot his latest feature.
Betty Brink claims the AAN-member paper hired Pulitzer-winning former Dallas Morning News reporter Dan Malone at a salary exceeding her own by over 50%. The Dallas Observer reports that Brink -- at 70 perhaps the oldest working journalist in the alternative newspaper business -- has filed a complaint with the EEOC, alleging age and gender discrimination.
It's a new sociological phenomenon: Increasing numbers of gay teenagers are proclaiming their homosexuality at an early age. Douglas Sadownick of LA Weekly talks to several gays who came out early to learn how a growing child ultimately decides to choose loyalty to his or her unfolding queer feelings over affiliation to family, religion, friends, and their own internalized homophobia.
"It's a newspaper advertising category that for decades has been owned lock, stock, and fur-lined handcuffs by alternative papers," reports Editor & Publisher's Mark Fitzgerald. "But now increasing numbers of daily newspapers are coyly succumbing to the many seductions of sex ads." Don't provide a sales rep, jack up the rates, slap restrictions on the ads -- despite these barriers, adult sections in most alternatives still grow like kudzu. Daily papers are beginning to take notice.
Deep in the heart of Texas, near the Mexico border, lies Cameron Park -- the poorest town in the United States. The per capita annual income of the residents of Cameron Park is only $4,103. Disease and illness plague the community and many of its inhabitants do not have health insurance. Yet, the people of Cameron Park sing merry songs and find solace in that things are getting better. Carlton Stowers of the Dallas Observer journeys to the town of Hispanic immigrants to chronicle their story.
In a 4,000-word article that dominates the second issue of The Beast, co-editor Matt Taibbi says Jamie Moses wasn't happy about "Artvoice Death Toll at 7," an article in the Beast's inaugural issue which lampooned the AAN paper "for spending money on a color cover instead of on starving children abroad," or another that ridiculed Moses' physical features. Taibbi spent the past five years as an editor of eXile, an English-language biweekly newspaper published in Moscow "that among journalists acquired a reputation ... for being quite possibly the world's most outrageous and mean-spirited newspaper."
The gag order that was lifted last Wednesday prohibited the paper from publishing documentation of high school grade-tampering provided by former teachers of Crossroads Charter High School. In CL's June 19 issue, staff writer Tara Servatius reported that the teachers complained that school administrators changed grades so students could graduate. Creative Loafing Editor John Grooms hails the decision: "We're glad we were able to strike a small blow for freedom," he says.
