AAN members won 15 first-place awards in the California Association of Newspaper Publishers' annual contest, led by Palo Alto Weekly, which took home five firsts. Chico News & Review placed first in in three categories; Pacific Sun won two; and Metro Santa Cruz, North Coast Journal, Sacramento News & Review, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the Santa Barbara Independent each finished in first in one category. The awards were presented in a ceremony Saturday evening.
As we reported last month, Tak Toyoshima's comic strip, which originated out of the Dig and appears in many alt-weeklies, has been picked up by the United Feature Syndicate and will become a daily feature in papers nationwide beginning July 16. In an interview with the San Francisco-based Japanese-American newspaper Nichi Bei Times, Toyoshima talks about his goal for his new expanded audience: "I want readers to see a strip that isn't afraid to talk about things that most cartoon cats wouldn't touch but also feel like they are not being hit over the head by some overbearing agenda."
Mark Fitzgerald dissects Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' recent rosy report claiming that federal agencies have improved their response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The fact that "more than half of the agencies -- 54 of them! -- actually met their mostly modest milestone goals on time" was heralded by Gonzales as a sign of "diligent and measurable progress," Fitzgerald says. "If my youngest kid brought home a report card from St. Thecla Elementary School with a mark of 59, the next time he touched his PlayStation controls he'd have to wipe away the cobwebs." Fitzgerald argues that FOIA backlogs would be reduced by the OPEN Government Act, currently stalled in the Senate thanks to a hold by Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ), who says he is acting on concerns raised by the Justice Department. "The same Alberto Gonzales who is trying to sell a rosy picture of a White House intent on making FOIA more accessible is sabotaging the very law that would accomplish that," Fitzgerald concludes. AAN encourages you to get involved in efforts to get these important FOIA reforms passed. To learn how, click here.
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