Media Monitor: May 3

AltWeeklyDeathwatch shuts down: The anonymous blog AltWeeklyDeathwatch, having taken more than a passing interest in City Pages’ editor Kevin Hoffman, has stopped publishing after reporting Hoffman threatened legal action against what he dubs a “hate site.” Created in January by former employees of Village Voice and New Times (now merged as Village Voice Media), the site aimed to “chronicle the death spiral of the American alternative weekly as it descends through identity crisis, self-parody, and irrelevance.”

In its final post, the site said Hoffman “has rained both legal and vaguely physical threats on our source,” and added that the decision to stop publishing was made after “folks with no connection to this blog are named in a comments section.”

The site has criticized Hoffman’s writing, professional demeanor, and editorial style, while also veering into more personal areas: his marriage, choice of tattoos, and personal appearance. Asked to comment on AltWeeklyDeathwatch’s shutdown, he said, “No, I’m not going to comment on that site.”

Some gratitude: Aiming to get a little more mileage out of his “Best Locally Generated Blog (Right Wing)” nod in City Pages’ Best of the Twin Cities issue, Dan Lacey is trying to auction the award off on eBay. “Very few people are impressed that I won it, and the strangers I’ve talked to about it don’t know what a blog is,” he wrote at Faithmouse. “A number of fellow conservative blogs are suspicious of me simply for having been awarded the honor, and left-wing blogs won’t acknowledge my presence. Therefore I believe a fellow established or would-be blogger may be able to put the award to better use than myself.” The gag: his starting bid for his hand-drawn facsimile of the certificate — which includes an art-brut-ish “I am the shit” faux ribbon — is $666.

Press freedoms decline globally: It’s World Press Freedom Day, and according to the report “Freedom of the Press 2007: A Global Survey of Media Independence,” free expression continued its global decline last year, with only 18 percent of citizens living in countries with free presses. The United States tied for 16th out of 195 countries, a slight uptick from last year.

“Although the United States continues to be one of the better performers in the survey,” the report said, “there were continuing problems in the legal sphere, particularly concerning cases in which legal authorities tried to compel journalists to reveal confidential sources or provide access to research material in the course of criminal investigations.” (See the cases of Dan Nienaber in Mankato and Josh Wolf in San Francisco.) Areas that saw the greatest declines in freedom include Latin America (where violence against journalism has spiked and rulers like Hugo Chavez have restricted rights), Southern Asia (due to coups and states of emergency in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Fiji), and China (where internet censorship is high and there’s been a crackdown against “cyberdissidents“).

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