A three-judge federal appeals court panel has upheld a lower court ruling that Atlanta can't force newspapers into city-owned newsracks that bear Coca-Cola advertisements at Hartsfield Airport, Editor & Publisher reports. The city also planned to charge the newspapers $20 a month for the boxes, more than the administrative cost of maintaining them, E&P says. The city may ask the full 12-member 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule in the case.
Dennis Freeland, a longtime editor and sports writer for the Memphis Flyer, is dead at 45 after a struggle with a malignant brain tumor. Freeland was managing editor of The Flyer from 1992 to 1994, editor from 1994 until 2000, and the paper’s sports columnist throughout his tenure. He died.Sunday at his home. "One of the last times he smiled was when he heard that Steve Spurrier had resigned," his sister tells The Flyer.
Kathy Glasgow of Miami New Times interviews Marilese, who came to the United States in 1992 fleeing political violence in her Haitian homeland. Now she has three children, an uncertain place in the United States and a heart filled with dark memories. "Marilise's story of degradation, poverty, and fear begins to reveal a person who in some ways has been an innocent victim all her life, except there's really no such thing," Glasgow writes. "It's hardly inspirational. Perhaps it's allegorical, a story not too far removed from that of every other Haitian woman who ever came here on a boat, except in degrees of darkness. She tells it in a stream of consciousness, pouring out vignettes then suddenly skipping to a different incident years removed. It sounds too awful to have happened, but so do too many stories from Haiti."
Ted Rall, who went to Afghanistan with his wife as a correspondent for The Village Voice and two radio stations, tells the Los Angeles Times about his "12th century experience." Rall, a cartoonist by trade, has an acerbic and cynical take on the war. For example, Rall descibes how Taliban surrender means a quick shave and a change of headgear. "The next day they are Northern Alliance troops. ... This is a fashion war," Rall tells the LA Times. "They could change hats again tomorrow -- and they probably will."
