The OC Weekly's Nick Schou got a double dose of good news today. Universal is developing a film based on his 2006 book "Kill the Messenger," about the late journalist Gary Webb. Variety had that story. And Thomas Dunne, the imprint of St. Martin's Press that publishes Roger Kahn, picked up Schou's proposal for a book on the Laguna Beach hippie mafia of the 1960s.

More alt-news: OC Weekly web editor Janine Kahn has jumped to the same position at SF Weekly in San Francisco. She also won an award from the Inland Southern California chapter of SPJ, as did quite a few others.

More book news: L.A. Times staff writer Scott Martelle has sold "The Fear Within," billed as "a detailed recounting and analysis of the Foley Square Trial, a little-known Communist witchhunt that preceded and in many ways influenced the Red Scare that followed," to Rutgers University Press. Martelle is the author of "Blood Passion."