AAN News
Tales from the Waitstaffnew
Waiters and waitresses are at the
mercy of their customers' egos,
whims and moods, but find hideous ways
to avenge themselves. Joey
Sweeney collects some of their
horror stories in Philadelphia Weekly.
Restaurant servers "by and large, live the
lives that most of us wish we had the
balls for. They're actors. They're
painters. They're in bands. They're in love.
And maybe the rest of us are just jealous
of that," Sweeney writes. They give
Sweeney the dish on their worst
customers ever and how they struck
back.
Labels Squeeze Music Criticsnew
In the post-Napster music piracy era, labels are holding advance CDs for the media until just before their release dates, Matt Borlik of Washington City Paper writes. "It's a concept so backwards, so self-defeating, so abso-fucking-lutely idiotic that only a major label executive could have thought it was a good idea," Borlik says. Not only that, alt-weeklies, which write more about music than any other media, are suddenly finding themselves completely off the advance release lists or having to accept streaming audio instead of CDs.
Washington City Paper |
10-22-2002 11:01 am |
Industry News
Water Supply Terror as Fund-Raisingnew
Marc Keyser, a friendly neighborhood anti-terrorism activist, has been telling Elk Grove residents it’s easy to poison the water supply, Chrisanne Beckner writes in Sacramento News & Review. Local officials say he’s all wet. "Some water officials have even decided that Keyser is so intent on distributing ever more refined plans for attacking the
system that he must not be as interested in improving water security as he is in collecting donations door to door," she writes.
Stewart Mourns Passing of New Times LAnew
"New Times was a full-throated,
outsized voice in a tremendously
meek media town," longtime New Times
LA columnist Jill Stewart writes in
the LA Times. She says New Times is the
only alt-weekly chain to "hit the news
harder with each passing year" and
charges other alties "have become
increasingly soft and mired in
out-of-touch 1970s-era liberal Democratic
mantras."
Los Angeles Times |
10-21-2002 2:06 pm |
Industry News
Tags: Management, Jill Stewart
Poisoned Livesnew
An alleged cover-up of environmental hazards at the Texas Bureau of Prisons' Federal
Medical Center for Women has excruciating consequences for a handful of workers. Fort Worth Weekly's Betty Brink reports that maintenance employees were exposed to high doses of lead while remodeling an unused room into a laundry. The old room still had cabinets lined with inch-thick slabs of lead from its previous use: nuclear medicine. Now two of the workers are critically ill, three workers and one inmate have sued in federal court, and the prison is saying it did nothing wrong.
TV Couple Flees After SLO New Times' Storynew
On Oct. 3, New Times published a short news article about the lewd behavior conviction of Kevin Graves, a producer and television personality at KSBY-TV in San Luis Obispo. The conviction, handed down seven months earlier, never made it into the news until it appeared in New Times. Graves is married to Sharon Graves, a popular weather forecaster on the same station. When the New Times story broke, Sharon Graves abruptly quit her job and left SLO County with her husband and children. The public response to the family's sudden departure was overwhelming, with most callers and letter writers decrying New Times decision to publish the story. In this week's issue, New Times asks several journalists and local personalities: Was the furor the downside to aggressive journalism in a small community? Or was it a case of a newspaper publishing something that should rightfully have remained a secret in the interests of individual privacy?
San Luis Obispo New Times |
10-18-2002 4:08 pm |
Industry News
King of Alternative Comicsnew
How does a geeky
guy who rarely leaves
the house and
generally avoids
human contact
become a pop-culture
icon? It helps if he
draws alternative
comics, a world where
nerds rule, alienation
is in, and there's no need to apologize for
compulsively alphabetizing your CD collection. The
hippest of the unhip these days is Berkeley's Adrian
Tomine, a shy Japanese-American with a sardonic wit,
Buddy Holly glasses and growing legions of fans who
haunt comic-book stores to scoop up his sophisticated
tales of Gen-X desperation. East Bay Express staff writer
Melissa Hung's story reveals what we secretly
already suspected: deep down, nerds are really pretty
cool.
Warning: Check the Copyright!
The ins and outs of public domain
(FULL STORY)
Alice Neff Lucan |
10-18-2002 1:21 pm |
Legal News
Tags: Alice Neff Lucan
Alts Should Look to Al-Jazeera for Inspirationnew
"The co-opting of the 'underground' tradition of
journalism into the more socially responsible
and sales-friendly 'alternative' press is now
virtually complete," Miami New Times' John Lombardi writes in response to a letter to the editor from Dan Sweeney, calendar editor of New Times Broward-Palm Beach. The '60s gonzo journalism was "a rancid upchuck onto the desks of the
reactionary old fart editors of those times." Now he suggests that young writers like Sweeney should look at Al-Jazeera, the independent Qatar-based television station that doesn't ask permission to make everybody furious.
Miami New Times |
10-17-2002 9:47 am |
Industry News
Tags: Editorial
The Rap on Tattoosnew
As the start of hoops season nears, well
over 50
percent of NBAers sport
tattoos. David Shields reads
what's written on the body.
"A tattoo is ink stored in scar
tissue," Shields writes in The Village
Voice. Shields asks the heavily
decorated NBA stars whether
they'd let a company buy a tattoo on
their bodies and the NBA if it
would let them sell such ads.
E&P Looks at Dailies Dressed as Altsnew
Several daily newspapers are planning to
target youth with new
publications aimed at
18-to-34-year-olds, but will they succeed?
Editor & Publisher offers pro and con
views: an unsigned editorial from this
week's issue suggests why "da
chainz" just might succeed; and E&P
intern Chris Nammour argues that
you can't teach a young dog old
tricks.
Editor & Publisher |
10-15-2002 10:23 am |
Industry News
