That's according to managing editor Andrew Beaujon, who notes that the paper recently produced new promotional magnets and pens, on top of making promo hats earlier in the month. "As you may have read, we are facing budget cuts," Beaujon writes. "So I guess I'm wondering whether the hats are a tactic to comfort or maybe confuse us -- perhaps if our heads are warm, we may not worry so much about our newsroom possibly going kablooey?"

Continue ReadingWashington City Paper Has a ‘New-Found Promotional Intensity’

Ian McNulty's A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina "certainly ranks as one of the better Katrina memoirs," according to John Sledge, a columnist for the Alabama daily Press-Register. "McNulty's approach is defiantly, if quietly, personal," notes Gambit Weekly's Caroline Goyette. "It's this tight focus, combined with the author's fine eye for detail and his honest, introspective narration, that gives the book its considerable power."

Continue ReadingGambit Weekly Food Columnist Pens Katrina Memoir

Joan Conrow, who was writing a story for the Honolulu Weekly about an oceanfront home being built atop a Hawaiian burial ground, was initially charged with trespassing when she covered a protest at the construction site. But when she went to the police station to be arrested Wednesday night, Kauai Police Chief Darryl Perry told her to go home -- and then had prosecutors rescind the charges, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Perry says that after looking at the arrest warrant, he decided that the arrest raised First Amendment issues. "She was covered by the First Amendment," Perry says. Her presence "didn't sit within the criteria of criminal trespass."

Continue ReadingTrespass Charges Against Journalist are Dropped in Hawaii

As a result of an Independent Weekly investigation, a Durham County Superior Court Judge dismissed all charges today against Erick Daniels, who was falsely convicted of robbery in 2001, when he was 15. The May 2007 story by Mosi Secret, "Stolen Youth," which won the the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, detailed abundant evidence to to support Daniels' claims of innocence, and revealed the contradictions and problems in the case to constitute reasonable doubt. Daniels, who has served seven years in prison, is due to be released this afternoon.

Continue ReadingConvicted Teen Freed After Independent Weekly Investigation