The Meridian Archive
MER
April 2000
Forty-One Shots, No Verdict

Forty-One Shots, No Verdict

Closed mid-March 2000 · On stands late March 2000

The Front

On the Word 'Bypass'

A surgical term's brief tenure as a household word

The Insured Gown

Grammy-night dresses insured for the first time at these numbers, and the arena-tour and album-sales figures behind the acts wearing them

On the Word 'Portal'

How a piece of technical shorthand became the industry's word for the front page of American life

The Foreign File

The Long Way to Concord

Cuban officials press the custody claim of a shipwrecked six-year-old held in Miami, a stringer's note on the diplomacy behind the courtroom fight

The Stones and the War

Tomás's dispatch on Sierra Leone's diamond-funded civil war, pitched and filed over the foreign desk's view that a resource story isn't a war story

The City

Subject: The four officers acquitted of all charges in the Diallo shooting

The Back

Books: null · Art: null · Film: David Letterman returns from quintuple bypass surgery and breaks his own on-air irony to thank his surgical team