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).
Originally Baltimore's alt-weekly was known as the City Squeeze and edited by "recent Johns Hopkins grad and inveterate pain-in-the-ass Russ Smith," Michael Anft writes. Anft takes a page from Smith's book and offers some biting suggestions for the Baltimore City Paper at the quarter-century mark, including spending more money on younger staff, instead of "aging hippies."
The Santa Barbara Independent breaks a major environmental story about a potentially catastrophic environmental disaster. The problem? A 15-year-old shipwreck of a single-hull tanker loaded with diesel fuel and copper ore. Ecosystems are dying downstream of the wreck. The story is "investigative and intriguing and has global implications as the state and federal governments work toward establishing a large network of marine reserves in the Santa Barbara Channel, a network that will likely be a model for similar reserves around the world," writer Matt Kettmann tells AAN News.
