Bob Norman, a staff writer for New Times Broward-Palm Beach, recently took home the 2001 Livingston Award for national reporting for his investigative series "Admitting Terror." The series revealed how incompetence and a skewed set of priorities at the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Norman's recognition is the latest notch in New Times Media's belt in what they are calling a "banner year."
The city's multitudes are returning to the primordial waters to worship, creating wonder for both believers and beholders and headaches for officals trying to balance religious freedom with safety and environmental concerns, The Village Voice's Eric Baard reports. "The insulted waters of New York City are again sacred passages, as they once were to Native Americans for millennia," Baard writes. "Thirty years after the 1972 Clean Water Act, raw sewage no longer pours into vital waterways, and industrial pollution has largely been checked. We are witnessing the ecological resurrection of our rivers and bays ... People are coming down to the water again to see rare birds, to kayak and to swim. And responding to an ancient call, they're coming down to the water to pray."
Willamette Week columnist "The Nose," a.k.a. Mark Zusman and John Schrag, says AANies can party hardy, but may be suffering from a deep malaise. Ads are down and that strikes fear deep in the hearts of publishers of all stripes. "The alties have gotten more scared and less idealistic," the column sniffs. "One wag told the Nose that these two developments are not unrelated. 'Hey, schmuck,' he fondly told me, 'when times get tough, ideals are always the first to go.'" The Nose duo placed second in the column-writing category of this year's Alternative Newsweekly Awards.
Traditional approaches like special kids' sections or youth-oriented stories sprinkled throughout the paper aren't working, so newspaper chains are testing alternative strategies to snag the elusive 18-to-34-year-old demographic, Editor & Publisher reports. For example, Gannett is launching free weeklies this fall in Boise, Idaho, and Lansing, Mich. and others have tried free-standing publications circulated to high school students. Meanwhile, some media conglomerates have decided that print is not enough, and have added youth-oriented content via radio, broadcast and the Web.
The timing may have raised eyebrows and hackles in Sacramento, coming as it did during the playoffs, but SN&R News Editor Steven T. Jones used an exclusive interview with Lakers coach Phil Jackson to try to talk him into running for president of the United States. Jackson took the bait and discussed the idea publicly for the first time. He's intelligent, confident, cool under fire, and he meditates every day. Says Jackson, "The challenge is what is good for corporations may not be good for the world itself as a harmonic organism." He brought the Bulls and Lakers together to win championships, says Jones. "It’s time to move on to the more challenging job of running this country as smoothly as a triangle offense."
Staff at the Dayton, Ohio paper have not been paid regularly since May 1, the local daily reports. Impact is one of the two remaining papers in the Yesse! Communications chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2001. Yesse! exec Kerry Farley says May 2002 was the paper’s best month yet, but that advertisers aren't paying up. "It’s a collections issue. But it’s also a problem with alternative newspapers in general," Farley said. The paper's editors have threatened to resign en masse.
