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.
The founders of the Missoula Independent are back together again. Eric Johnson has been hired as editor of Coast Weekly in Monterey, Calif., and his cohort Erik Cushman was promoted from vice president and director of operations to publisher. Founder Bradley Zeve will concentrate on community relations and grassroots social projects.
The category is off more than 50 percent this year, says AWN's Mark Hanzlik, who expects cig ads to remain in the ashcan for the foreseeable future. We already knew it, but now everyone else does too, since Frank Lewis reported it in the Philadelphia City Paper.
The National Press Club recognizes the Boston Phoenix media critic for his work in 2000, which the Phoenix says "ranged from local media stories to analyses of national and international events such as the presidential campaign and violence in the Middle East."
The results are in for the 2001 Alternative Newsweekly Awards, and Gambit Weekly is this year's big winner with nine prize-winning entries. Meanwhile, Texas Observer Editor Nate Blakeslee collected the most awards-booty among individual contenders, with winning entries in three separate categories. But hold the champagne corks for a couple of weeks: The order of finish won't be announced until July 12, during the annual awards lunch in New Orleans.
Peter Noel says he was kicked out of the Hip-Hop Summit, an event Def Jam founder Russell Simmons helped organize at the New York Hilton. Noel tells the Daily News' Mitchell Fink that he was barred from the meeting because Simmons didn't want him there. "When Russell found out I was a part of (a media panel on mainstream press hip-hop coverage) he went off." Simmons says nothing could be further from the truth.
