By: Mark Fitzgerald Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep people in downtown Greensboro, N.C., from reading this week's edition of the alternative newspaper Yes! Weekly, publisher Charles Womack says.
In an interview Friday, Womack said he's pretty sure he knows who is behind the theft between late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning of every single copy of the newspaper -- some 6,000 papers -- from the racks along Greensboro's Elm Street bar and entertainment strip.
Womack adds he's very sure why the papers were taken -- to keep a cover story headlined "Downtown Babylon" out of the hands of readers. The story by Jordan Green has a subhed, "Greed and iniquity in Greensboro's nightlife industry," that pretty much sums up the article about the tangled business and litigation relationships of some of the principal owners of Elm Street night spots.
"It's pretty easy to tell the papers were all deliberately taken out because of the story we wrote," Womack said. Elm Street and its close environs were where "99% of the papers" disappeared, he added.
Womack ordered another 6,000 copies for distribution in the strip.
This was the first incident of its kind in the five years since Womack launched Yes, a free paper with a distribution of 43,000 in Greensboro, High Point and Winston/Salem. He filed a police report, appealed for witnesses to the theft through the local news media, and is hoping security cameras may have caught something.
Yes drivers who refilled the downtown racks did not find the stolen copies in nearby trash containers, nor have any dumped copies been found.
The alt-weeklies racks carry a notice that the first copy is free, and additional copies are $1 each, so if the thief or thieves are caught they could be charged with a significant theft, Womack noted.
The cover story is posted on the newspapers Web site,
here.
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