Last year, 231 traveling jewelry salesmen were robbed in the U.S. of goods worth upward of $30 million. Just since the start of 2000, 17 San Francisco salespeople have been relieved of more than $6 million, often during what truly are daring daylight robberies. Most of the Bay Area crimes, law enforcement authorities say, have been committed by organized bands of jewelry robbers based in Los Angeles and composed primarily of illegal aliens from Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. The FBI has dubbed the gangs "South American Theft Groups," or SATGs. But just because the feds have created an acronym, SF Weekly's Peter Byrne discovered, doesn't mean they know how to deal with the problem.
Richard Hart will jump from the Raleigh News & Observer to become editor of Independent Weekly, Publisher Sioux Watson says. He replaces David Madison, who was named editor in October 2001. Madison has decided to return to Montana to rejoin his wife, Katie.
"San Francisco supervisors bowed to the City Attorney's Office once again and approved another really bad contract," Tim Redmond writes in this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian, introducing a story by Tali Woodward. The 20-year contract is with media giant Clear Channel Communications, which owns 1,200 radio stations across the country and assorted other media and advertising properties. It allows the company to erect modular news racks, called pedmounts, and sell advertising on the backs and sides. The deal gives the company "control over the distribution of newspapers in the city for the next 20 years," Woodward writes. "Even some of the supervisors who voted for the deal expressed reservations and said they were acting under legal pressure."
Jeff Truesdell, who had been with Orlando Weekly since its birth in 1990, was abruptly fired this week after a spat with Publisher Mike Johnson. Truesdell says he and Johnson had a tense relationship, but says the publisher never interfered with the editorial side of the paper. Johnson says he respects Truesdell but won't talk about the argument that led to the termination.
Thirty years ago, the nuns at St. Agnes Home for Unwed Mothers in Connecticut "brainwashed" pregnant teens shipped there to purge the shame of their premarital mistake by giving up their babies for adoption. The nuns insisted that God would approve. That's the claim of the women who contacted the Hartford Advocate to tell their stories. They also charge that the adoption of their babies was a money-maker for St. Agnes.
Cincinnati Vice Mayor Alicia Reece (pictured here) has threatened to call out the firefighters to intimidate a political rival and a Cincinnati CityBeat staff writer, the paper's Gregory Flannery reports. "Your Negro Tour Guide" columnist Kathy Y. Wilson has filed a complaint with police about the alleged threat. Editor John Fox says Reece visited him to complain about Wilson's coverage. "She said, 'If you can't control her, I will ... I have 150 firefighters who are willing to do anything I ask them.'"
AAN announces the results of the seventh annual Alternative Newsweekly Awards. Five AAN papers picked up five nominations each: Gambit Weekly, Independent Weekly, Creative Loafing Atlanta, LA Weekly and Willamette Week. Some of AAN's best writers and artists picked up nominations for the second, third, fourth, fifth and even sixth year. And a tough bunch of judges awarded only a first-place in several categories. So congratulations to first-place winners Clancy DuBos and Katy Reckdahl of Gambit Weekly and cartoonists Garrett Gaston and Ken Fisher (Ruben Bolling).
