The Arcata (Calif.) Mainstreet (AMS) has pulled all copies of last week's North Coast Journal from its periodical room and many of the businesses that belong to AMS have followed suit, the Arcata Eye reports. The paper was pulled for one week due to "the connection it made between very, very real needs of students and pot" in its back-to-school issue, says Taffy Stockton, AMS executive director. (The cover's subhead reads "Your student guide to housing, transit, surfing and weed.") Not everyone in town agrees with the position of AMS, though. A Humboldt State University public affairs officer tells the Eye that the university had no intention of removing any Journals from campus. "That would be Stalinist," Paul Mann says. North Coast Journal editor Hank Sims adds that banning his paper won't do much to reverse the cultural association of Humboldt County and pot. "Sorry, but that's what it's known for around the world," he says. "You can't close your eyes and make it go away." He added: "Humboldt County has a very high percentage of people who are pot smokers or are simply interested in the issue and we want those people as our readers."

Continue ReadingBusiness Organization Pulls North Coast Journal Over Pot Cover

Last year, the creator of the comic strip "Lulu Eightball" did a comics feature for Baltimore City Paper about her her love/hate relationship with cigarettes, which is now been adapted into book form. These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves: A Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Love Letter to a Very Bad Habit was released by Bloomsbury this month. In a conversation with Philadelphia City Paper, Flake says she's once again a smoker, and that it took her "a great many cigarettes" to write the book. She also offers sage advice to anyone trying to get someone else to quit smoking: "Refuse to kiss them on the mouth. While you're fucking them."

Continue ReadingCartoonist Emily Flake Turns Alt-Weekly Feature into Book

"We held many discussions during our redesign process -- a fresher, more confusing Stranger hits the streets today -- about how we could better serve the public," editor Dan Savage writes. Somewhere along the way the paper came up with the idea of creating a new position: the public intern. "Just as the public editor works on behalf of readers, the public intern interns on behalf of readers. Steven [Blum] is your intern, Seattle, he works for you." His first assignment? Cleaning a Seattle bus. "I expected that the bus driver would kick me off at some point -- in my head my first report was going to end with an angry bus driver marching me down the aisle," Blum writes. "I'd already planned my passive aggressive response: 'People can shit their pants on the bus but I can't 409 the floor?'"

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Redesigns, Creates Public Intern

The American Bar Association's Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions has withdrawn proposed resolutions which sought to limit public access to criminal justice system records, according to a press release issued by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "We appreciate that the commission heard our concerns and took a second look at the dire effect these recommendations would have had on transparency in government," Reporters Committee executive director Lucy Dalglish says.

Continue ReadingABA Withdraws Proposed Criminal Justice Records Resolutions

Evening Post Publishing, parent of the daily Post and Courier, has offered cash to at least 50 local retailers and restaurants to replace the various newspaper racks in their establishments with single multi-publication boxes, Charleston City Paper reports. The Evening Post would then turn around and charge the city's free publications for space in the new boxes. City Paper publisher Noel Mermer says the alt-weekly will not be involved in this distribution "partnership." "The City Paper cannot and will not pay the Post and Courier for the relationship that we have built with local businesses over the years," Mermer says. The situation in Charleston is similar to ones increasingly faced by alt-weeklies in other markets, such as Jackson, Miss., where the Jackson Free Press and the publishers of other publications developed the Mississippi Independent Publisher's Alliance and distributed their own consolidated boxes.

Continue ReadingCharleston, S.C., Daily Embarks on Distribution Scheme