City Paper staffers took home seven Golden Quill Awards, including best in show, for non-daily newspapers at the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania's annual awards banquet Thursday night.

"I couldn't be prouder of this great collection of journalists," said City Paper Editor Charlie Deitch.  "Whether it's news, music or arts and entertainment, this staff works hard every day to tell the stories that might otherwise be left behind by the mainstream press." 

City Paper Staff Writer Rebecca Nuttall's in-depth feature on the failures of the Pittsburgh Public Schools' highly touted University Prep High School won first place for education reporting and also received the Ray Sprigle Award for best in show among non-daily newspapers. 

Music Editor Margaret Welsh won first place for arts and entertainment reporting for her feature on the rising success of Pittsburgh indie-punk band The Gotobeds.

The award for column writing went to Arts and Entertainment Editor Bill O'Driscoll's monthly Green Light column, which focuses on the environment. Former City Paper columnist Hal B. Klein was also a finalist in this category.


Former Music Editor Andy Mulkerin's piece on the work by UPMC's Musician's Hearing Center's work with local artists was named the top health, science and environment story. Staff Writer Alex Zimmerman's story on autistic adults aging out of support services was also a finalist in this category.

Editor Charlie Deitch received two awards. The first for best history and cultural reporting for a story on a local "queer archaeology" project that unearthed the secrets of Pittsburgh's original underground LGBT clubs. He also won for best sports story for a feature on Monessen boxer Sammy Vasquez who made a name for himself in the ring after serving in Iraq.

Also for the first time ever, CP was a finalist for multimedia reporting for Ashley Murray's and Rebecca Nuttall's coverage of protests in the wake of police violence against unarmed black males. 

Michael Slaby, who guided online and social-media strategies in both of Barack Obama’s presidential runs, speaks tomorrow night as part of the Green Building Alliance’s Inspire Speakers Series.

Joining him are Debra Lam, chief innovation & performance officer for the City of Pittsburgh, and emcee Andrew Butcher, co-founder and CEO of Pittsburgh’s G-TECH strategies.

Slaby is a consultant who uses technology and social media to address social challenges. In addition to Obama for America, Slaby has worked for organizations including F*ck Cancer, LiveStrong, and Bright Pink, and for the United Nations and the U.S. State Department. Currently, he is a managing partner of Timshel, a new company.

The GBA, which promotes more sustainable architecture and construction practices, says Slaby’s talk will address how to “inspire a diverse and inclusive movement to transform our region into a thriving place from the ground up.”

Also speaking is Lam, a Pittsburgh native with an international resume that  includes stints in New York, China and the U.K. She has worked as a project manager and policy consultant at Arup, a global consulting and design firm, and has done strategy work with clients including the World Bank. In her current position, she works to make city government more efficient, open, transparent and responsive.

The event takes place from 5-8 p.m. tomorrow at the Hillman Auditorium. The Hill House is located at 1825 Centre Ave., in the Hill District.

Tickets are $20 and are available here. The evening includes beer, wine and food as well as networking opportunities.

Other Inspire Speakers Series co-sponsors include Chatham University and Sustainable Pittsburgh.

“How many dead people in Juarez does it take for one person in New York City to consume a gram of cocaine?”

The question occurred to Judith Torrea, 41, at a Manhattan dinner party. Originally from a mountain village in the Basque region of Spain, Torrea now lives in Juarez, Mexico — dubbed in 2009 as the most dangerous city in the world. She describes the Manhattan moment in her blog, Under the Shadow of Drug Trafficking.

At the time, 2009, she was senior writer for the Spanish edition of People magazine, working from an office in Rockefeller Center. “Powerful people parties” with white powder were part of her life. Asked amidst a circle of millionaires planning a museum fundraising gala and a weekend in the Hamptons, the question stopped the show.

Not long after, Torrea took her savings to Juarez, which she’d first visited in 1997 and often since. She’s the only international journalist living at this principle gateway for drugs from Columbia to the U.S. At a City of Asylum/Pittsburgh salon two days ago, on the North Side, Torrea told her story to a full house of 75 people.

Charming even as she presents horrifying anecdotes, Torrea impresses as a multilingual journalist who’s operated in powerful circles and does not evade discomfiting reality.

“Juarez is not a beautiful place,” she says. But “I fell in love there,” she says of meeting the “most inspiring people I’ve met,” the mothers of missing women.

A city of about a million people, Juarez has since 2007 suffered (according to Mexican government data) more than 11,000 murders — “mostly poor people,” says Torrea, “who have no connection with drugs.”

Torrea says the maquiladora system of cheap labor for American- and European-owned factories is a large part of the problem. A typical salary is $40 a week. “It’s impossible to live on that.” Hence youth are fertile ground for gangs and violence.

After a year of blogging from Juarez, Torrea was down to $200 and facing a painful choice. An unexpected telephone call told her she’d won the 2010 Ortega y Gasset Prize, roughly equivalent to the Pulitzer for Latin America and Spain. It brought $12,000 after taxes.

Despite death threats, Torrea stays in the city she now calls home. Even worse than death threats, she says, was being robbed of her notes and computer (at a conference in Mexico City). “At first I was depressed, and then thought, ‘It’s not my daughter. I don’t have a daughter.’ Then I couldn’t feel bad.”

Courage? Not exactly what you expect to find at a Pittsburgh literary salon on a Wednesday evening. But Torrea, a presence at 6’2", strikes me as one of the most courageous people I’ve been in a room with.

“The most difficult thing, more than threat of death,” she says, “is to protect your soul.” For her that has meant choosing to be, rather than a NYC journalist, a blogger in Juarez.

See Judith Torrea on YouTube in English here, here and here.

Ever since Conflict Kitchen unveiled a selection of Palestine-inspired dishes Oct. 6, the restaurant has faced criticism from Jewish organizations that have rebuked the Heinz Endowments for helping fund the restaurant. These critics have argued that the U.S. is not in conflict with Palestine. (The restaurant features a rotating menu inspired by cuisine form places the U.S. is currently engaged in conflict.)

Those criticisms have been included in two separate articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, both written by dining critic Melissa McCart. The latest story, which ran yesterday, included B’nai B’rith International's objections to Conflict Kitchen as a "deeply unsettling choice for a grant," as well as a statement from the Heinz Endowments distancing itself from Conflict Kitchen, but issuing blanket approval of artists who "perform edgy and provocative programming."

In a post that has gotten some traction online, Conflict Kitchen co-founder Jon Rubin objected to the P-G's coverage of the story, saying McCart "neglected to include any of Conflict Kitchen's answers" to interview questions — and did not include "the viewpoints of local Palestinians."

Reached by phone this afternoon, McCart says she offered Conflict Kitchen a chance to comment for the story Tuesday afternoon, roughly 24 hours before deadline. Rubin responded to questions McCart sent via email after the story had been filed late afternoon Wednesday. "It was too late," McCart says. "I appreciate that Mr. Rubin wants to be heard and that he's concerned about funds being rescinded. But I think the way he framed his voice not being heard was not honest."

On the same day the story ran, McCart posted Rubin's responses on the P-G's food blog.

"I respect Jon," McCart adds. "I wish there hadn't been such a fallout that seems pretty unnecessary."

For his part, Rubin confirmed that he preferred to be interviewed by email, and that he didn't have a chance to respond to McCart's questions until Wednesday afternoon because he was "working all day and we wanted to be very considered with what we said."

Still, Rubin says, he's concerned with the lack of attention to Palestinian voices in the controversy. "No one has asked local members of the Palestinian community how they feel about this," Rubin says. "That's an important point."

McCart declined to say why interviews with local Palestinians didn't make it into either article.

For now, Rubin says he's not concerned the controversy will jeopardize the restaurant's future. He says the $50,000 grant they received from the Heinz Endowments was largely to cover the cost of moving to Oakland and "95 percent of funding" comes from public support, including food sales.

"The public has approached us with incredible support and trust and open minds and curiosity," Rubin says. "No one has complained whatsoever at the restaurant and we're busier than we've ever been."

For those of us that work at City Paper we always knew we were as fun a place to spend the afternoon as Kennywod Park, but now we know it for sure because Rick Sebak made a little documentary about us:

City Paper readers honored the local filmmaker as their Best Media Personality and Sebak graciously agreed to schlep around town with photographer Heather Mull and art director Lisa Cunningham to visit other Best of Winners and get his picture taken. The issue is still on newsstands for one more day or you can take a look at the digital issue.

The plainer the evidence becomes that climate change is real, the louder some people deny it.

No surprise that the latest frothing attack comes from Jack Kelly, the Post-Gazette’s designated right-wing attack dog. For years, Kelly’s been denying the mountains of evidence on climate change — that’s it’s human-caused, that it’s dangerous, that it’s not hypothetical but already happening. But his column in yesterday’s Sunday Forum might be a new low.

Tellingly, the column was framed as a “fact check” of Secretary of State John Kerry’s statements on the dangers of climate change.

The problem isn’t that Kelly misrepresents Kerry’s statements (though he arguably does that, too). He also implies that any misstatements by Kerry repudiate decades of climate science.

Oh, that and the fact that the source Kelly leads with is Myron Ebell, whom Kelly identifies as “an environmental expert” from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a long-time engine of climate denial with heavy backing from the fossil-fuel industry.

Kelly's column, headlined “Climate Craziness,” has the subhed, “Kerry spreads misinformation.” Kelly, with Gobell’s help, claims two big gotchas on the secretary. One, according to Kelly, was “The temperature of the Earth had been relatively stable ‘for literally millions of years,’ Mr. Kerry suggested.” The other was that greenhouse gases constitute “a very thin layer of gases” in the atmosphere.

Kelly goes on to note several instances — include one dated to 52 million years ago! — where the earth’s climate was different than it is today. And he quotes Ebell as saying that the quote on the “thin layers of gases sets a 'new standard’ for spreading disinformation.”

Here’s what Kerry actually said (back in February, in Indonesia):

As a beat writer and later a columnist, Dejan Kovacevic has been a part of the Pittsburgh sports scene for more than 25 years. That will still be true tomorrow morning but don’t look for his work on the pages of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review as you have since 2011.

On Wednesday, Kovacevic will launch his own subscription-based website — DK on Pittsburgh Sports — offering subscribers his insights and coverage of the city’s local sports teams. Kovacevic tells City Paper that the new platform has only been in the works for the past couple of weeks while he was on vacation from his job as a Trib sports columnist.

He returned to work Monday, let his bosses know of his plans and immediately parted company with the paper. He says the split was amicable — “I have nothing but good things to say about the Trib or [editor] Frank Craig.

Kovacevic spent his vacation thinking about the future of journalism and his relationship with his readers. Those relationships, he says, is why he decided to take this plunge.

“Without sounding over melodramatic about it, I have developed this readership that I believe in,” Kovacevic says. “I’ve been able to connect with people over through the years through writing at first at the Post-Gazette and then at the Trib.

“People trust you to research and write opinions that they feel are honest and transparent, even if that opinion differs from their own. Also it helps that I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, I grew up with the sports team that I now cover. Maybe that carries more weight than it should, but that means something to people here.”

At 47, Kovacevic says he is young enough to see where the next generation of media is heading but old enough to know what goes into providing quality, responsible journalism. His goal, he says, “is to try and strike a balance between the two.”

“The plan is for a venture built not only in an online community but also on social media, which is my only megaphone,” explains Kovacevic who boasts more than 51,000 Twitter followers and whose blog the past year at the Trib received 3.3 million page views and more than 250,000 comments. “So, the question became do I have to be associated with a brand name or can my own reputation be the brand.

“I looked for the precedents out there for what I’m attempting, and quite simply there are none.”

Since his announcement Tuesday night, Kovacevic says the response has been positive. He’s already received several subscriptions and he’s also heard from “journalists across North America” who were very curious about is new endeavor.

“These were some really big-time guys,” he says. “I didn’t see that coming and it’s encouraging.

“There’s no question there are a lot of eyes on what I’m doing both here and outside Pittsburgh to see if this works. I’m the lab rat.”

Kovacevic says he’s still working on what all the site offerings will be. It will start out with two to three columns per week along with other daily content meant to spawn discussion among the site’s readers. “The goal is to create a community,” he says. There will also be game discussion threads and pieces written in a less-than-traditional manner. For example coming up later this week he plans to write a piece about a Penguins prospect and part way through the piece, he’ll insert video from the interview so the reader can see how the player responds and handles the questions, and then pick the writing back up again. “The great thing is when you’re online, there are so many ways to present things.”

Kovacevic plans to cover as much for the new site as he ever did as a reporter for the Post-Gazette since 1990 (he began in 1985 as a freelance writer) and later the Tribune-Review. He is fully credentialed through all the major sports teams and he plans on traveling to cover the teams, just as he has in the past. The only difference is he’ll be working for himself instead of a newspaper.

“I’ve been asked a few times how I could leave the security of my job to do this. I don’t know, did I?” he asks. “None of us know where newspapers are heading."

The goal of the site is to be completely subscription supported. However, Kovacevic says he will be announcing a major corporate sponsor in the next few days that will help him through the start-up process. The cost of Kovacevic’s subscriptions is $4 a month, $24 a year and $54 dollars for three years. A price he thinks is fair for the content he’ll be providing.

“If you get the three-year plan it’s only $1.50 a month,” he says. “In newspaper terms, that’s only a paper-and-a-half.”

The Friday night early-evening radio slot is an important one: This is the music you listen to when you're getting ready for a night on the town, or maybe driving to the restaurant before a date. That slot about to get a boost in Pittsburgh with the addition of Grand Groove Radio, a new DJ slot on WYEP-FM, hosted by longtime local crate-digger and hip-hop head DJ Selecta.

Selecta (James Scoglietti) has been a DJ on and off the air for over 20 years, and most recently has hosted an overnight free-form show on WYEP. He's also co-owner of 720 Music, Clothing and Cafe, in Lawrenceville. Expect a mix of soul, funk, jazz and golden-era hip hop on Grand Groove Radio.

The show launches Fri., August 1. It replaces the Friday evening edition of The World Cafe.

Self-publishing isn’t just for that novel in your desk drawer. These days it encompasses many platforms, from classic photocopied zines to blogs, podcasts and web TV.

We + Alien She is a panel talk and presentation by folks who’ve been self-publishing for a while. It’s presented by the Carnegie Mellon School of Art (CMU’s Miller Gallery is currently hosting Alien She , a DIY-heavy look at riot-grrrl culture) and the Carnegie Library. Folks from the library’s zine collection are also involved.

Panelists include Ayanah Moor and Raquel Rodriguez, who do the Queer & Brown in Steeltown podcast; Ginger Brooks Takahashi, of the projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE and a co-founder of feminist genderqueer artist collective LTTR; and CMU art professor Jon Rubin, a key force behind the late, lamented talk-show/diner known as Waffle Shop and other boundary-blurring art projects.

The panel takes place 6:30-8:30 p.m. tomorrow night. It’s free. The library is located at 4400 Forbes Ave., in Oakland.

Organizers remind you that the library is just a short walk from the Miller Gallery, where Alien She is open tomorrow from noon-6 p.m., if you want to take a look at work by Brooks Takahashi and others before the panel presentation.

This week, experts from around the world are in Pittsburgh for “Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” at Duquesne University. The group of scientific, legal and investigative, scholars, journalists and authors were brought together to discuss what are often referred to as “conspiracy theories.”

During a panel discussion at the Senator John Heinz History Center on Oct. 17, examining how the JFK assassination has played out in the media, authors joined director Oliver Stone in indicting the mainstream media for what they believe was a failure to investigate legitimate facts surrounding JFK’s death.

“There were leaks all over the place from the beginning of the Kennedy assassination," said David Talbot, founder and former CEO and editor-in-chief of Salon.com. “And yet, the whispers behind closed doors in Washington weren’t getting to the press or weren’t getting reported.”

While Stone is well known for his controversial biopic on JFK, the other noted authors, several of whom have worked in the media, have all published work related to the assassination and unpopular theories like those claiming the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s death. Despite reports in the mainstream media, several of the panelists said the CIA’s involvement in Kennedy’s assassination has been proven.

“The media has never addressed the idea that operatives in the CIA carried out the assassination of the president,” said Lisa Pease, chief archivist of RealHistoryArchives.com. “If the press had looked seriously at the JFK assassination they would have found conspiracy.”

Instead the panelists said the media perpetuated the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald as JFK’s killer in order to help American citizens recover quickly from a devastating tragedy.

“The idea is that evil comes out of the murkiness and kills the good,” said Stone. “It’s easy.”

And according to the panelists, the media’s negligence continues today.

“This case is a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with the media,” said Jerry Policoff, a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Village Voice.

“In almost all cases, (journalists) stay with the pack,” said Russ Baker, founder of WhoWhatWhy.com, an investigative reporting website. “This is not just about the JFK assassination. These stories are happening all the time.”

The 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination is on Nov.22.