The Weekly is blessed to have three wonderful interns this summer: Jacki Kuder, Beth Prosnitz and Ellen Ranta. Well, at least they seem wonderful so far. I mean, two of 'em have been here for a week or less, and could very well turn out to be deranged or something. But so far, so good.

I am digressing. My point here is to share with you, the Weekly blog-reading public, the very same Web sites that I force under the threat of extreme punishment ask our interns to peruse on a regular basis, so they get a taste of what's happening in the journalism world outside of Weekly World Central:

1. Romenesko on Poynter.org. I ask my interns to peruse this daily. It's an excellent blog, maintained by Jim Romenesko, which features links (with blurbs) to all sorts of media coverage of, well, the media. Lately, there have been a ton of stories on newspaper sales, mergers and cutbacks. Sigh.

2. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. I ask the interns to check this out a couple of times a week. This is the Web site for the trade group to which the Weekly and 120-some other alt weeklies belong, and the site features association news, links to outside stories about members, a directory of all the members, and so on. Good stuff.

3. Altweeklies.com. I ask my interns to peruse this at least several times a week. This site, a service of the above-referenced AAN, serves two purposes: 1. It's a story sharing site for AAN members. (So, say, I have a space in the paper to fill in a panic. I can go here and get a story to fill that space.) 2. It's a hub for the public to easily peruse what stories some AAN members are doing, without going to 120-some different Web sites. (It should also be noted that John Banks and the good folks at DesertNet put together this site for AAN. Those are the same folks who put together the Weekly's Web site. John has also been helpful in bringing this blog together—and he blogs, too!)

4. www.tucsonweekly.com. This one is obvious.

These are all great Web sites for people who care about journalism.