The city and Bay Area newspapers have reached an agreement that allows the city to install uniform modular newsracks. Newspapers, including SF Weekly, had sued in 1999, arguing that the original scheme violated their First Amendment rights. "The settlement, which the publishers reached with the city attorney last week, will give the newspaper companies a say in where the new city-controlled racks are installed and which newspapers get to use them," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Through a series of e-mails from one Mr. Fantastic, Philadelphia City Paper's Howard Altman gets caught in both a web of espionage and an ethical morass. Mr. Fantastic says he can give Altman national security secrets about the layout of Site R, aka "Harry's Hole," in sleepy Waynesboro, Pa., one of the Bush administration's "shadow government" installations. Pretty soon the FBI is looking over Altman's and photographer Christina Felice's shoulders, and Pultizer Prize winner Seymour Hersch is growling "you are in way over your head on this, aren’t you?" Altman strings Mr. F along in cooperation with the FBI but can't quite agree to work with the men in black to sting him. Stay tuned.
A battle of words still rages in Portland, Maine, two weeks after Dodge Morgan fired most of the editorial staff at Casco Bay Weekly. Editor Chris Busby says Morgan was a “philanthropist” who suddenly panicked about the paper’s losing money. Morgan and his ex-wife, Lael Morgan, say Busby and his all-male staff were insubordinate and hostile. Not only that, Lael Morgan says someone peed into a trash bag full of files found after the firings. Not us, insists a furious Busby.
Author Robert James Waller went into seclusion after his book The Bridges of Madison County became a runaway best-seller. He bought a ranch in remote Alpine, Texas, and hunkered down. Then Waller finished writing the sequel to Bridges and offered its publishing rights to the owners of the local bookstore, a husband-and-wife team from Houston who themselves had escaped the limelight to find peace of mind in the back country. Dallas Observer staff writer Carlton Stowers tells the story of one of the publishing world's most unlikely business deals.
