This might be surprising news to anyone who associates MTV with alternating marathons of Jersey Shore and 16 and Pregnant episodes, but they actually create some compelling television with their True Life series. On Saturday, Nov. 5, the series takes a look at Occupy Wall Street focusing on “three young people who get swept up in the political movement that has quickly grown into a global phenomenon.” Should be interesting, at very least.

In other Occupy news, a former member of boy band 98 Degrees was arrested at the protest in Cincinnati. Seems sort of like news, at very least.

• Dan Gibson's terrible screencap from the 4 pm broadcast on KOLD.

He's been off the air since a strange incident in early September, but Chuck George is back on air tonight, according to Dave Hatfield at Inside Tucson Business:

KOLD News 13 chief meteorologist Chuck George is back on the air today (Oct. 24) following a leave of absence since he was unable to finish the 10 p.m. news on Sept. 6.

He first appeared doing a promotional weather announcement about 3:30 p.m. and then appearing on the stations' 4 p.m. newscast.
Click here to find out more!

"It worked out well, we actually had a change in weather today," said Debbie Bush, general manager. She declined to discuss the details of George's absence but said it was good to have him back on the air.

I might be wrong, but it appears to be the same station. Sure, there's are fancier promos and new bumpers between songs, but in the end, what I personally care about is the music, since I always have the option to flip channels when I hear talking, and the music seems to consist of the same music they played before the change. The sequence of tracks I heard on my way into work? Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely", Hi-Five's "The Kissing Game", and Janet Jackson's "Nasty", which all would have fit into the previous format. The new station's website promises music from "Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire and more", so maybe the addition of music from Madonna is the big change? I'm so confused, but at least I know that I still have somewhere to turn when I need to hear a Earth, Wind & Fire track within an hour or so.

Bill O'Reilly must be really conflicted. He likes to play the populist, sticking up for the regular guy, but he can't go on Fox News and stick up for Occupy Wall Street. Quite the conundrum for the guy. The entire pointless conversation is worth it for Cornel West and Tavis Smiley's amused outrage, however.

If you want to see actual video of the moment, here you go. The outrage explodes at 5:01:

The Tucson Weekly was named the non-daily Newspaper of the Year in the Arizona Newspapers Association’s annual Better Newspapers Contest.

The Sierra Vista Herald—which, like the Weekly, is owned by Wick Communications—won Newspaper of the Year honors in the daily-newspaper category. Newspaper of the Year awards are determined via a points system, combining honors won in the Excellence in Advertising Contest (announced earlier this year) and winning entries from the Better Newspapers Contest.

The Better Newspaper Contest results were announced today, Saturday, Oct. 15, during the ANA’s annual convention in Scottsdale. The contest period was May 1, 2010 through April 30, 2011. Judging was done by the New York Press Association.

The Weekly dominated the individual writing categories in its circulation category (non-dailies with a circulation of more than 10,000), and won several newspaper-wide honors as well.

Beyond the Newspaper of the Year honor, the Weekly’s biggest award came in the Community Service/Journalistic Achievement category, for the coverage of the mass shooting on Jan. 8, 2011, that left six dead, and 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wounded.

The 11 other awards earned by the Weekly:

• First place for Best Sustained Coverage or Series: Jim Nintzel, for his Congressional District 8 election coverage.

• First place for Investigative Reporting: Leo W. Banks, for “Smugglers’ Paradise” (Nov. 25, 2010), and his subsequent coverage of the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Terry was killed in the line of duty in the Peck Canyon Corridor three weeks after Banks’ Nov. 25 piece warned of increasing dangers there.

• First place for Best Sports Story: Tom Danehy, for “Rez Ball” (March 3, 2011).

• First place for Best Column, Analysis or Commentary: Renée Downing, for “We Can Learn a Lot From Our Animals About How to Accept the Passage of Time” (April 28, 2011).

• Second place for Best Special Section: Best of Tucson® (Sept. 23, 2010).

• Second place for Best Column, Analysis or Commentary: Tom Danehy, for “Tom’s Modest Proposal for a Rewrite of the DREAM Act Bill” (Feb. 24, 2011).

• Second place for Best Column, Feature or Criticism: Stephen Seigel, for “Albums in Your Stocking” (Dec. 16, 2010).

• Second place for Best Multimedia Storytelling: Josh Morgan, for “Last Days of the UMC Memorial” (The Range, Feb. 7, 2011).

• Third place for Page-Design Excellence.

• Third place for Investigative Reporting: Tim Vanderpool, for “Your Tax Dollars at Work” (Nov. 18, 2010).

• Third place for Best News Feature Story: Mari Herreras, for “Honoring Chelsie” (May 6, 2010).

Randy Hoeft of the Yuma Sun, and Dave Brown of San Pedro Valley News-Sun and Arizona Range News (which are fellow Wick publications) were named the ANA 2011 Photographers of the Year. Brady McCombs of the Arizona Daily Star, and Shanna Hogan of Scottsdale Times were named the ANA 2011 Journalists of the Year. Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News-Sun (yet another Wick publication) and a team from the Star won Story of the Year honors.

Tucson Weekly staff writer Mari Herreras has been named the winner of this year's Community Ally Award by Wingspan.

Herreras covers the LGBT community for the Weekly—including this week's cover story, "The Bi Life," for the Weekly's latest thrice-yearly Pride section.

Other award winners announced today by Tucson LGBT community center Wingspan: Alex Lopez and Ana Jimenez—co-coordinators of Puertas Abiertas, Wingspan's Latino-outreach program, are the Steve Hall award winners; and Jennifer Hoefle, the University of Arizona's program director for LGBTQ Affairs, was named the Godat Award Winner.

Read the news release after the jump.

Glenn Parker announced on his afternoon show on Wednesday, Oct. 12, that he'll be leaving In the House, the local sports-talk show broadcast weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m., next week.

Parker founded the program along with Dean Greenberg. When Greenberg left, Kevin Woodman stepped in as co-host. Parker, Woodman and Rob Lantz have hosted the show in its most recent form, with Woodman and Lantz handling the three o'clock hour when the show expanded its time slot a couple of months ago.

Parker is involved in numerous sports broadcasting projects that require significant travel. This weekend, he will be in Pullman, Wash., to broadcast a football game before traveling to New York City for a college football show on Versus.

His last show on KCUB AM 1290 is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 19. Woodman and Lantz are expected to handle hosting duties beyond that.

Under his blog name of Emin Milli, Emin Abdullayev of Azerbaijan embodies how online social media
are changing political protest and challenging oppression around the globe.

Milli will discuss blogging as activism in Azerbaijan on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 11 a.m. in Chavez 111. A Q&A will follow at the end of the free talk, entitled “Blogging in Baku.”

James O'Keefe, of the somewhat scandalous ACORN tapes and the almost completely phony NPR hubbub, is back! And this time, he's pretending to be a banker and walking into the Occup Wall Street fray. I suppose he was hoping to be attacked by the protesters or something, but instead someone offers him cake. Most of the video is taken up with O'Keefe receiving a lecture from a seemingly unhinged person who wants his "interests financed". Gotcha, Occupy Wall Street! This guy taped for an unknown amount of time and found one weird guy to make a video out of! Zing!

So, this guy's going to go away soon, right?

[Mediaite]

Yes, January is very nice in the new Men of the Stacks 2012 pin-up calendar, but continue flipping through the pages and take an extra look at May. It's Sol Gómez from the Valencia branch of the Pima County Library.

• January

The Men of the Stacks project was first conceived a couple of years ago after learning of the publication of another library-themed calendar. Our first reaction to that calendar? “Well, cool but…where are all the men?” There was another, earlier calendar that featured only male librarians, but we felt it didn’t quite capture the way we saw ourselves. In both cases, either the stereotype was reinforced or it didn’t go far enough in breaking free of it.

Gómez, pictured looking longingly over a book, told the Range that he was approached to do the calender two years ago by friends he serves with on the American Library Association.

"They asked me if I’d be interested in doing a calendar," Gómez says. "I said I'd do it. All we had to do was the photo shoot."

While Gómez, is one of the more conservatively dressed librarians in the calendar there is January and a few others you can see in this nice Huffington-Post slide show.

But let's get back to Gómez. Weekly World Central did a TQ&A with him in 2009 when he was given an I Love My Librarian Award by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and The New York Times. He's also the father of three and husband to Tucson Unified School District governing board member Adelita Grijalva, who can now proudly boast she's married to a pin-up model.

Gómez told the Range that so far the calendar has raised about $8,000 and all funds go to the It Gets Better Project, which was selected by everyone involved as benefactor of the calendar's proceeds. It Gets Better was created last year to encourage LGBT youth who may face harassment and bullying.