"Can you trust an alternative newspaper over 30?" Creative Loafing Atlanta's Senior Editor John Sugg asks. Well, yes and no. In a column published in Weekly Planet Tampa, Sugg's old stomping ground, he says alt-weeklies may be greying and corporate but they're still kicking the dailies' butts. Mainstream media have "dumbed themselves down to the point of imbecility," Sugg says. "Maybe now the alternative press will stand and achieve its true greatness, revealing what the powerful don't want revealed." If they don't, Sugg's hoping some firebrand now in high school is waiting in the wings to create the next underground press.
Editor Pete Kotz eviscerates alt-weekly competitor Cleveland Free Times, saying its "relentless strife still makes for the best running sitcom in town" and laying odds Free Times will close. David Schneiderman, CEO of Free Times' parent Village Voice Media, in an e-mail to Kotz, calls the Scene's claims "untrue and outrageous." Free Times Publisher Matt Fabyan tells AAN News the article is "pathetic, desperate and sleazy." Now Free Times Editor David Eden is calling Scene Publisher Ramon Larkin, "badgering him about (Scene's) finances," Kotz reports. Payback may be in the offing.
What's it like to share a community with a top-secret paramilitary compound? Ask the people of Hertford, a small community nestled in eastern North Carolina. Located just outside the city is the fenced-in, heavily secured Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity where explosives are tested regularly. The knowledge of what exactly goes on at the base is limited, but the residents of Hertford are used to that, as Independent Weekly finds out.
Dan Kennedy, the Boston Phoenix's media critic, originally opposed publication of the video and photo of Daniel Pearl's grisly slaughter. Now that his paper has carried through with its vow to publish the images, Kennedy has changed his mind. "It's important to see the Daniel Pearl video because it's important to look into the face of the pure evil we're up against," Kennedy writes. "It's important to see it because merely reading a description of it cannot do justice to its full horror."
What do local Ohio politicians have to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict? Despite their irrelevance, Ohio officials chime in on this sensitive international issue, siding firmly with Israel. Columbus Alive's J. Caleb Mozzocco reports on the controversy that has Columbus' Muslim and Arab community seething.
