Attorney General John Ashcroft now demands the very federal powers he opposed as a Missouri senator, Ray Hartmann points out in the Riverfront Times. "As for today's Ashcroft, whatever happened to the Fourth Amendment and the 'indivisible American value' it contains? To borrow a phrase (his), 'apparently innocent citizens are expected to trust the bureaucracy not to abuse them.'" For Ashcroft, that was then, Hartmann writes.
This week’s edition of Westchester County Weekly will be its last as a separate publication. Beginning next week, it will be folded into its sister publication, Fairfield County Weekly. About 30,000 readers in Westchester County, N.Y., will get their own cover with the old nameplate, but the content of the two alternative newsweeklies will be identical. Fran Zankowski, CEO and group publisher of Advocate*Weekly Newspapers, tells the staff in a memo that they made a “valiant attempt” to save the paper, but it was just not profitable enough to stand alone.
Independent Weekly names David Madison editor. Madison is a native of Chapel Hill, N.C., and a veteran alt-weekly writer and editor. Publisher Sioux Watson says the only person happier about the hire than the Indy staff is Madison’s mama, who is glad her boy is coming home.
"Being ahead was a lot less complicated than being alone," Andy Newman, editor of Pittsburgh City Paper, tells the Pittsburgh Business Times. The staff plans to meet this week to redesign and remake City Paper after its parent company bought rival newsweekly In Pittsburgh last month and closed it. City Paper has since then absorbed a number of former In Pittsburgh employees. Newman says he would rather "drive carpet staples" into his gums than conduct a focus group, but admits he's asked some other journalists for input on the new design.
