AAN News
Young Warriors Gather for Battles in Cyberspacenew
This is a new kind of war being
played out
on hundreds of thousands of computers.
And the
stakes are not just street cred but money
and prizes
and a certain kind of rabid fame inherent
to a
weird subculture like the one
surrounding computer gaming. This is
Team
Forsaken, one of the Houston area’s
best
gaming clans, and Jennifer
Mathieu
watches as they humiliate their friends
publicly,
shake their asses in other people's
faces, wear
baseball caps at all times and play
video
games for
hours on end.
Former AAN Publisher Returns With New Papernew
Steve May, who owned Lafayette,
Louisiana's highly
regarded Times of Acadiana until selling it
in 1998, plans to return to the market in September
with a new weekly paper. May and his wife, Cherry
Fisher May, last month bought a monthly lifestyle
magazine and will convert it to a weekly to compete
with the Times, which is now owned by
Gannett, also the publisher of the Lafayette's
only daily paper. "They have screwed up
my
newspaper so badly and I think it’s part of a plan to
steadily bleed The Times of character and influence
and somehow, divert it into the daily," May says.
The Times of Southwest Louisiana |
07-23-2003 7:16 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Management
Village Voice Lays Off Six Full-Time Staffersnew
In addition to the layoffs, editors Karen Cook
and Lenora Todaro have resigned,
according
to a memo posted on Romenesko.
Publisher Judy Miszner says the layoffs will
help the paper maintain its "long-term health and
sustain profitability" and are "a reflection of
the difficult business climate in New York City."
Miszner also says she doesn't expect New York's
economy to rebound in the coming
months.
Romenesko |
07-23-2003 5:00 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Management, The Village Voice
The Romance Writers of America Fight Backnew
Although they represented more than half of all
paperback fiction sold in North America last year,
romance novels have long been the object
of ridicule among the East Coast publishing and
critical establishments. But the "shockingly nice
ladies" who attended a recent convention of the
Romance Writers of America don’t care what anyone
thinks about their love stories, and they will remind
you that Jane Austen and Charlotte
Bronte were the best-selling romance novelists
of their time. Alexander Zaitchik reports
that the romance field has
diversified in recent years -- with some subgenres
like chick-lit and romantica starting to bump
against the limits of the romance formula.
Straight Out of North Phillynew
When a police-led quality of life initiative
forced drug dealers off the
streets, Philly hustlers didn't know
what to do. Dealers argued over every
corner, every $5, every baggie sold.
Three North Philly peddlers
decided to
leave the narcotics trade behind and start
selling T-shirts. Philadelphia
Weekly's Steve Volk explores
whether or not these guys are for real -- or
just
trying to position themselves for their next
court appearance.
Daily Rewrites Salt Lake City Weekly Seriesnew
Eight months after Salt Lake
City's
alternative paper did a major expose of
real estate fraud, the Salt Lake
Tribune trotted out the same story
and packaged it as original, Shane
McCammon writes. An ethics guru
tells McCammon, "I think most honorable
organizations will give a nod to the
original publication” but
the Tribune's
Terry Orme shrugs it off and
says, “We always feel we
do it better than other media outlets.”
Salt Lake City Weekly |
07-21-2003 11:28 am |
Industry News
Eyewitness to the Pandemicnew
NUVO's Fran Quigley traveled to an Kenyan hospital as the guest of the Indiana University School of Medicine, which for 14 years has worked with the hospital’s academic partner, Moi University College of Health Sciences. Since the IU-Moi program was first profiled in NUVO in May of 2001, the AIDS pandemic has passed the bubonic plague to become the worst health crisis in human history. The numbers are staggering: In sub-Saharan Africa, there are more than 30 million people infected with HIV, with as many as 6,000 people dying from the disease every day.
Air Force Academy Twists its Own Codenew
For more than 40 years, cadets at the United States Air Force Academy have pledged to abide by a simple code: "We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does." Westword's Julie Jargon talks to some cadets who recently were booted out of the academy just before graduation. They say that simple code is remarkably complex. "They claim that it's a moribund tradition with unevenly applied sanctions -- a fact that academy officials and members of Congress have known for years," Jargon writes.
JOA Papers Opened at Seattle Weekly's Requestnew
The Seattle Times has agreed to
release the full text of
depositions conducted in its lawsuit
with the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer's owner, The
Hearst Corp. The Times and Hearst had
previously released only excerpts from
the transcripts in the dispute over their
joint operating agreement. Seattle Weekly
yesterday made a court request for the
documents. "The important thing is they
are going to get released, and
everybody's going to be able to have a
closer look at how the JOA's been
managed," Chuck Taylor, Seattle
Weekly's managing editor, told the
Post-Intelligencer.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer |
07-17-2003 4:31 pm |
Industry News
FBI Questions Man Seen Reading Alt-Weekly Articlenew
Marc Schultz was grilled by FBI
agents acting on a tip from someone who
saw the dark, bearded freelance writer
reading something "suspicious" in a
coffee shop: After retracing his steps,
Schultz remembered what he had been
reading: a printout of an
article from Weekly Planet (Tampa) --
Hal Crowther's "Weapons of
Mass Stupidity." "(I)t seems like a dark
day when an American citizen regards
reading as a threat, and
downright pitch-black when the federal
government agrees," Schultz writes.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
07-17-2003 4:02 pm |
Industry News
Shafer Says Free Commuter Dailies About Business, Not Journalismnew
"Before the Express can work as
an advertising vehicle, it must first
achieve marginal editorial success,"
Slate's Jack
Shafer says about Washington Post
Co.'s
"latest strategy to reclaim young AWOL
readers."
New Times CEO Jim
Larkin tells Shafer the Post and other
dailies are
trying to stem the erosion of their near
monopoly that began in the
early 60's; San Diego Reader's
Howie Rosen suggests the
papers have priced themselves out of
local markets with their steep advertising
rates. Village Voice Media CEO
David Schneiderman says the
dailies "patronize" young readers, and
"then wonder why they don't read their
newspapers."
Slate |
07-17-2003 12:11 pm |
Industry News
The Girl Who Played Deadnew
Dallas Observer Editor Julie Lyons goes in search of a young woman who survived one of the most horrific crimes in Dallas history and finds a still youthful woman with clear brown eyes who remembers nothing. Lyons finds all the survivors and two of the gunmen in the "bathtub shooting" -- five teenagers shoved into a bathtub with the water running and peppered with dozens of .45 caliber rounds. Because Lizzie Williams played dead, miraculously four of them survived. The crime was the emotional peak of a virtual war over the crack trade in South Dallas, now a fading memory.
