When a Chicago man burned himself to death near a busy expressway, initial news reports failed even to provide an identity. But with the help of local musicians, the Reader's Peter Margasak soon determined that the man was Malachi Ritscher, a fixture as a fan and a player on the local jazz scene. On Ritscher's music-focused Web site Margasak unearthed a self-penned obituary and a suicide note that suggested the self-immolation was, at least in part, a protest of the War in Iraq.

Attorneys for a man accused of killing a University of Vermont student have asked a judge to dismiss the charges because an FBI agent wrote an anonymous op-ed piece about the case in the Burlington alt-weekly. Co-publisher and Editor Pamela Polston tells AAN that Seven Days considered posting an explanation online but ultimately decided to "let the controversy play out in the letters-to-the-editor section." The affair triggered a deluge of mail, which can be read here.

Three quarters of 13- to 17-year-olds who read newspaper content targeted to their age group went on to read their hometown papers between the ages of 18 and 24, a Newspaper Association of America Foundation study found.

Casey Parks, a former assistant editor who left to earn her master's in journalism at the University of Missouri, is back at the Jackson Free Press as a contributing editor. Parks joins the JackBlog lineup and is penning a series of columns about a reporting trip she took to Africa with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof after winning an essay-writing contest.