Philadelphia City Paper celebrates its 20th anniversary this week with a big paper and a big party. In those two decades, the paper has had only two owners. Editor David Warner says one spent "15 years squeezing a nickel until the buffalo turned blue," and both preserved the integrity of the news against incursions from the advertising side.
The AAN Convention in New Orleans featured 521 attendees, 44 exhibits, seven new AAN members and one great party. Not to mention Hazel Reinhardt, Leslye Geller, Rick Bragg, Andrei Codrescu and Oliver Stone. Plus a jazz funeral and some amazing beds. Who could ask for anything more?
"They've been doing these jobs for a while now," says Jeff vonKaenel, explaining why he recently named Kathy Barrett and Dave Schmall publisher at their respective weeklies, Chico News & Review and Sacramento News & Review. Both had been serving as general manager.
The Village Voice reports that a libel suit originally filed by anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson against Tampa, Fla.'s Weekly Planet, its editor, John Sugg, and former Associated Press reporter Richard Cole, has reached New York in an assault on that state's media shield law. Sugg wrote stories in 1998 and 1999 calling Emerson a fanatic who had, among other things, tried to link respectable Muslim scholars in Florida to the World Trade Center bombing. Emerson claims these and other media stories have damaged his credibility.
A court has ordered Mindich to release his private emails concerning a rape case in which his wife Maria Lopez was judge. Friends and family of the victim say the sentence Lopez gave the defendant was too lenient and claim Mindich’s emails are part of a “whisper campaign” to discredit the victim. Mindich says the content of the emails is irrelevant and that he’s ready to go to the Supreme Court if necessary to prove his private correspondence is private.
