BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
GADJET: More Twitter Quitters Than Repeat Tweeters
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Twitter quitters outnumber the flock of habitual tweeters on the rapidly growing online communications service, a new study suggests. Most people aren’t joining the Web site’s jumble of conversations for very long. More than 60 percent of Twitter’s U.S. users don’t return a month later, based on an analysis of traffic trends unveiled this week by the research firm Nielsen Online. The lackluster retention rate of 40 percent suggests many people don’t see the point in spending time on Twitter, which allows anyone to write about what they’re doing or what’s on their mind in messages, or “tweets,” […]
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE: Captain Janks Will NOT Be Getting You High Tonight (Or Tomorrow)
DAN GROSS: North Wales’ Tom Cipriano, better known to fans of Howard Stern as Capt. Janks spent the weekend in jail. He was arrested Thursday by Plymouth Township Police for allegedly taking a deposit of $350 in December from the Old Mansion House in Conshohocken to host an event there in March for which he never appeared, according to Detective-Sergeant Karen Mabry of Plymouth Township. The prank phone caller is also alleged to have taken a $350 deposit from the Edge Hill Tavern in Glenside in December for an appearance Feb. 22, which he did not show up for, according […]
AND THEN THERE WAS MAUDE: Bea Arthur RIP
LOS ANGELES TIMES: “God will get you for that, Walter.” Nobody could do more with these words than Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay on the marital warpath. She could slingshot them in fury or release them in a chilling deadpan, but however she delivered them you could be sure they’d hit their mark with a prizefighter’s pop. All the tributes that will be lavished on Arthur, who died Saturday at 86, will extol her impeccable comic timing. Her ability to detonate a joke, to momentarily harness a punch line before releasing at full force, brought her Emmy-winning success in two […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #18 Oh noes!
HECKUVA JOB: Tierney & Phila. Newspaper Execs Fiddled In Rome While Inquirer/Daily News Burned
YAHOO: The company that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News hosted a $233,000 trip to Rome for about 70 people a year before filing for bankruptcy protection. The six-day Philadelphia Newspapers trip was an incentive for advertising managers and major advertisers, Executive Vice President Richard Thayer told a U.S. bankruptcy trustee Thursday. The three top executives — Chief Executive Brian Tierney, Thayer and Executive Vice President Mark Frisby — and their wives also attended, he said. Philadelphia Newspapers LLC filed for bankruptcy protection in February 2009, citing $395 million in debt. Recent court filings also show that Tierney […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Author Craig Yoe explores the risque art of the man behind Superman in his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art Of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster. As Yoe explains, artist Joe Shuster did not earn much money for his part in the creation of the man of steel. After suing D.C. Comics over the copyright for Superman, Shuster drew art for an obscure series of magazines called Nights Of Horror. In Secret Identity, Yoe collects Shuster’s racy drawings and details the scandal and murder trial related to Nights Of Horror. The author of over 30 books, Yoe runs […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
HIGHER LEARNING: This Is Your Brain On Steroids
NEW YORKER: Adderall, a stimulant composed of mixed amphetamine salts, is commonly prescribed for children and adults who have been given a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But in recent years Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers: drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted. (Such use is “off label,” meaning that it does not have the approval of either the drug’s manufacturer or the Food and Drug Administration.) College campuses have become laboratories for experimentation with neuroenhancement, and Alex was an ingenious experimenter. His brother had received a diagnosis of […]
YOU ARE BEING WATCHED: You Cannot Hide
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall. The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said yesterday. Gary Sutton Jr., 40, of New Milton, and Charles […]
WEEK IN REVIEW: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #17 Better late than never. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you might even learn something.
SECOND AMENDMENT: The Right To Bear Harms?
NEW YORK TIMES: Where were their parents? That was the thought I couldn’t shake ten years ago as news broke from Littleton, Colo., and all cameras were aimed at Columbine High School. It was my first national tragedy as a parent, and my perspective took me by surprise. A few years earlier I would have put myself in the shoes of the terrified students, huddled in classrooms, hiding under tables in the library. But on April 20, 1999, I felt for the parents. Racing toward the school building, stopped by police tape and SWAT teams, learning their kids were safe […]
ONE MILLION TWITS CAN’T BE WRONG: Can They?
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Ashton Kutcher has beaten off rivals to be the first member of the twitterati to secure one million followers. The 31-year-old actor had been in a race with news network CNN to be the first ‘twitterer’ to reach the milestone. And shortly before midnight Thursday he achieved his goal. MORE CNN: As of Wednesday afternoon, Kutcher’s Twitter account had 896,947 followers, putting him in third place in the number of followers. Britney Spears was in second with about 905,640 followers, and CNN’s breaking news account was watched by 937,787 people on the site. No single Twitter account has […]