Black Friday isn’t as dire as its name implies. It’s the day after Thanksgiving and earned the moniker since many retailers’ bottom lines make it out of the red and into the black on that day. But for a lot of people working for the nation’s largest private employer, and a lot of the folks […]
Kirk Ross
Bio: Kirk Ross is a freelance columnist for INDY Week and founded the online news and feature publication The Carolina Mercury. He lives in Chapel Hill.Link: http://www.exileonjonesstreet.comEmail: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/ExJS
Posted inNews
Hot type
The journalism world is abuzz with blogs and blogging–has been for a couple of years now. In that, we at the Indy are no different. There is a fascination with this medium both in content (sites like Eschaton, Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos are becoming daily routines) and in concept. Ideas like Wikipedia, an […]
Posted inNews
Bucking the trend
It’s good to see the community spirit in action and, these days, between benefit concerts, fundraisers and the stories of volunteers on their way to or newly returned from the Gulf states, there is plenty of evidence that in crisis at least we can still count on each other. But you don’t have to travel […]
Posted inNews
Don’t be cool
Call it circular logic. I have this fascination with newspaper inserts–advertising inserts. I read them, much to my wife’s chagrin, with great interest each Sunday and I try to stay up on the big pre-weekend sales flyers as well. It’s not that I’m going shopping, it’s just that I’m trying to understand earthlings–and Americans in […]
Posted inGuides
Spooky kind of love
Chapel Hill The initials “DJ” start his stage moniker, but don’t expect two turntables and a microphone from DJ Spooky. Instead, think turntables, computers and a massive multimedia “remix” of D.W. Griffith’ s Birth of a Nation. Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller, has been transforming words, music and images for more than a decade–a kind […]
Posted inNews
The deep end
I’m not sure what finally drove them there, but treading water in the far, deep end of the pool are some very desperate characters. There’s the group that pulled up to Cindy Sheehan’s encampment and unloaded a ready-made counter-protest with signs that read “We Don’t Care.” There’s Limbaugh, who loathes her and called her story […]
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Spitzer’s magnum opus
It is hard to be shocked at what is found in the latest reports on the music industry’s practice of wholesale bribery of radio stations. But if you’re looking for a riveting read, try the latest 43-page tale from the New York State Department of Justice. In three decades of reading, writing and playing music, […]
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The sandkeeper
Don’t ask him to talk about shells. The beach is so much more than that. It’s not that Orrin Pilkey doesn’t like shells, he just wishes that when people are at the beach they weren’t so, um, shellcentric. “The beach is so rich,” Pilkey says, leaning forward in his chair in a conference room cluttered […]
Posted inNews
Light ’em up
If you’re the parent of a teenager and worried that they might become one of the 24,000 young Tar Heels who will start smoking this year; or if you’re an employer or employee paying more out of pocket for your health care; or if you’re a health care worker or the family member of a […]
Posted inNews
No secret
The dirty little secret about how things really go down among the lobbyists and legislators in Raleigh isn’t little, it isn’t secret and unless the law is changed, it isn’t even considered dirty. It’s no secret that those who walk the halls of the legislature representing corporations and interest groups by day are picking up […]