Mara Shalhoup's BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family, which is being published by St. Martin's Press, is due to hit stores next week. The book springs from Shalhoup's 2006 award-winning three-part series in Creative Loafing (Atlanta), "BMF: Hip-hop's shadowy empire," which examined the rise of the Black Mafia Family, a cocaine-trafficking network with ties to a music label and various violent crimes in Atlanta. BMF leaders Big Meech and his brother Southwest T are each currently serving 30-year sentences.

Continue ReadingCreative Loafing Editor’s Award-Winning Reporting Spawns Book

A comScore survey done for the Newspaper Association of America finds that newspaper websites are the most-visited and most-trusted sources for local news and information, outpacing local radio and TV websites, portals, and speciality and social networking websites. Approximately 57 percent of the 3,050 respondents said newspaper sites were the top online source for local information; that percentage grew for upper income households (63 percent) and for the college educated (60 percent).

Continue ReadingSurvey: Newspaper Sites Most Trusted Local News Source

The Press recently developed a multimedia site to accompany a cover story on Long Island's Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center and its holocaust survivors as part of its attempt to find new ways to present its journalism. Publisher Jed Morey tells AAN News it is all tied into the company's recent expansion of video journalism, which includes hiring a full-time video journalist. "It has really energized the staff and brought a whole new perspective to our reporting, because his pitches are so unique," Morey says. "Part of our growth this year is online and we're making original video a huge part of that initiative."

Continue ReadingLong Island Press Turns Cover Story into Standalone Multimedia Site

Two law firms have filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by the popular user-generated review site. The suit's plaintiff, a veterinary hospital, allegedly requested Yelp remove a negative review from the website. The suit says the company refused to do so, a move that was followed by repeated calls from Yelp sales reps demanding payments of roughly $300 per month in exchange for hiding or deleting the review. The East Bay Express explored similar charges in-depth last year. Yelp denied everything in the Express' coverage, and went as far as to attack the reporter for being inaccurate. Regarding the class-action suit, a Yelp representative calls the allegations "demonstrably false" and says the company will "dispute [the suit] aggressively."

Continue ReadingClass-Action Suit Alleges Yelp is Running an ‘Extortion Scheme’

New Times editorial operations manager Jay Bennett, a 40-year-old music fan and musician, is authoring the "Nothing Not New" blog, where each weekday, he listens to one new record and writes about it. Music editor Martin Cizmar says the project springs from Bennett's "aesthetic atrophy," an "unavoidable consequence of aging" defined as the "wasting away of the ability to appreciate new, different, or avant-garde music." Checking in a little more than two months into the year-long experiment, Bennett says it has been "fun, but difficult," adding: "It's like traveling abroad for two weeks but really missing American junk food after day 10, or dining out so much that you've forgotten the simple joy of preparing and eating a home-cooked meal."

Continue ReadingPhoenix New Times Staffer Fights ‘Aesthetic Atrophy’ with Music Blog

Nine and a half years after OC Weekly's R. Scott Moxley broke the story about well-known AIDS doctor George Steven Kooshian having injected patients with saline and vitamins instead of the expensive drugs they were billed for, the 59-year-old was sentenced Monday to 15 months in federal prison. Kooshian was also ordered to pay $660,955 in restitution to 18 insurance companies for 21 patients who were subdosed.

Continue ReadingOC Weekly Investigation Leads to Prison Time for AIDS Doctor

AAN members have the opportunity to participate in a live webinar from Poynter's NewsU that focuses on mobile media and producing news in the digital age. "Mobile Media 101: Producing News with Your Smartphone" is scheduled for Wednesday, March 3, at 2 pm Eastern time. The first 25 AAN registrants using the AAN discount code will get a special rate of $9.95.

Continue ReadingDiscounted NewsU Webinar on Mobile News Production Next Wednesday