The San Francisco Bay Guardian expects to move into its own $4.7 million building sometime this month – where they will "never have to worry about an eviction … never have to worry about a bad landlord," says Executive Editor Tim Redmond. A 1950s era law banning SBA loans to media companies was repealed in 1994. Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express took advantage of the program in 1995. Now the Bay Guardian has swung a deal for a 30,000-square-foot building with a rooftop view of the Bay Bridge thanks to an SBA loan guarantee package.
"This is the the single most gruesome, horrible, despicable, and horrifying thing I've ever seen,'' Boston Phoenix Publisher Stephen Mindich says in an editorial accompanying his paper's link to the unedited video showing Pearl's decapitation. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Mindich decried the fact that the tape had not been more widely viewed and discussed.
In one of the most memorable events ever at an AAN convention, Dan Savage electrified the seventh annual Alternative Newsweekly Awards affair with a high-voltage performance that included nearly naked waiters and publishers shedding trousers. One attendee called it "the best hour of comedy I've ever seen." Savage's fatwah: every first-place winner had to drink a shot and shed an article of clothing. Two-thirds of the way in, he admitted, "I can't believe you are all playing along. The power of one pushy fag in AAN -- it's amazing."
Gambit Weekly took four first-place awards today in the seventh annual Alternative Newsweekly Awards, the most of any paper in AAN for the first-place awards.
Speaking at AAN's First Amendment Luncheon, Vanessa Leggett said she learned journalism "the same way an adolescent boy learns about sex -- groping and fumbling my way through, getting rejected and slapped occasionally." Slapping in her case included jail time for refusing to turn over materials from confidential sources to a Texas grand jury. "We must always work to ensure the free flow of information to the public," she said. "When the government gets involved, that can't occur."
