Alternative newsweeklies across the country have bucked the trend of unquestioned support for the president and the new war in Afghanistan. They’ve also paid the price for their criticism, with retribution ranging from yanked ads to death threats.
Pittsburgh City Paper and its sister radio station were under brief lockdown after radio host Jim Quinn received a suspicious letter. "We sat around, telling jokes we laughed a little too hard at," while a hazmat crew with disposable clothing searched the trash, Managing Editor Chris Potter writes.
The work of a half dozen alternative newsweekly music writers appears in “Da Capo Best Music Writing 2001”, published this month. Guest editor, Nick Hornby, calls the collection “a dip full of good stuff.”
The Village Voice joins other New York media outlets in beefing up security after the attacks on the World Trade Center and anthrax scares, the New York Post reports. "We have a responsibility to keep the building as safe as possible," Voice Publisher Judy Miszner tells the Post.
In an unsigned column, Fort Worth Weekly bids farewell to its "fiercely independent and damn-the-torpedoes" editor John Forsyth, who was fired this week by new owner Lee Newquist. "We can only hope that Lee Newquist will make good on his promise to support the same kind of gutsy journalism that Forsyth did," says the author(s).
Last week, several news outlets reported that the coffee chain was pursuing marketing deals that would provide local dailies with exclusive distribution in return for free advertising and the papers' agreement to stop selling at competing coffee shops. Now Starbucks officials say the proposal was the result of internal miscommunication.
