Steve Jackson serves up a compelling expose of what happens when a sexual predator enters a teen chat room. Mike and Cassandra Harris of Colorado’s Jefferson County District Attorney's Crimes Against Children unit were among the first to set up stings of Internet predators, with Cassandra as bait, playing both boys and girls. “The advantage here, of course, over dailies is that instead of telling readers that these men get online and say bad things to children, I could put down in black-and-white what they say and how they say it ... hit the reader over the head with the reality of it,” Jackson tells AAN News in an e-mail.
"Twelve years is too long for a writer to stay anywhere, particularly in the field of alternative journalism," Greg Land says in his farewell column. He’s off to different pastures, leaving his spot at Creative Loafing to "new blood."
Mara Shalhoup got a lead on a story that's all-too-familiar, and nearly always ignored by the dailies. Tim Peck, a freelance computer guy, walked down the street from his home to get a carry-out burger at the Fox & Hounds. He left the premises in an ambulance with two broken legs after an altercation with off-duty Sheriff's Deputy Kelvin Smith. Creative Loafing's exclusive opens Deputy Smith's personnel file, and it's packed with similar incidents. Shalhoup spent a month researching and writing the story after waiting a month before Peck would agree to talk to her.
Charles Gerencser, former publisher of New Times Los Angeles, has been named publisher of Pasadena Weekly, one of the seven papers that were admitted to AAN last month. Gerencser comes to the alt pub from NuSign Industries and will help lead Ventura Newspaper Inc.'s efforts in the Los Angeles suburbs, says Group Publisher David Comden.
