It seemed like it started last year, when the Society of Professional Journalists passed a resolution recommending newsrooms stop using "illegal alien," and even questioned the term "illegal immigrant," in stories on immigration when describing undocumented immigrants.

This year, the Associated Press stuck by “illegal immigrant," as did the New York Times.

Last week, on Tuesday, Dec. 4, the Arizona Daily Wildcat published that the student-run newspaper's standards and practices committee "agreed to use the term “undocumented.”'

You can read their announcement here. Snippet:

We easily could have ignored the issue without making a decision. We haven’t had a preferred style in the past and we could have continued to go without.

However, because of Arizona’s proximity to the border and how frequently border security issues come up, even in higher education, it seemed important for the Wildcat to have a set style when it came to this term.

At the beginning of November, Ruben Navarrette, a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, wrote that groups pushing for the word “undocumented” are trying to “shame the media” into political correctness.

The Wildcat staff explored this idea, but agreed that using “undocumented” isn’t about trying to talk around the issue or dress it up as something it isn’t. Using “undocumented” is about avoiding characterizing someone’s entire personhood by one civil offense.

I was worried a bit by the economic and political ramifications of the whole "fiscal cliff" thing, but now that I know that the Justice League of MSNBC Hosts are on the case, I suddenly feel a sense of peace washing over me. Thank goodness for largely useless partisan media!

The replacement for current Tucson Weekly editor Jimmy Boegle has been announced, and his name might be familiar to Weekly readers: Dan Gibson, former web producer for Tucson Weekly and Weekly sister paper Inside Tucson Business.

Dan Gibson, former web producer at Territorial Newspapers, will take over as editor of the Tucson Weekly on Jan. 1, publisher Tom Lee announced on Monday (Nov. 26).

“Dan’s background in alternative newsweeklies and how they relate to website development and social media makes him the logical choice for the position,” Lee said.

Gibson will join the staff immediately after resigning his most recent position as digital content director at Clear Channel Radio in Tucson. He will work with editor Jimmy Boegle, who is leaving the position to launch a website in Palm Springs.

Gibson was the web producer for the Weekly and sister paper Inside Tucson Business from October 2010 to August 2012, doubling the Weekly’s daily web traffic during his time in the position. This year, while he oversaw the publication’s digital content, the Weekly won both a Local Media Association Best Web Initiatives award and a second place prize from the Arizona Newspaper Association for Best Newspaper Website. Earlier this year, he was named an Association of Alternative Newsmedia Next Generation Scholarship winner.

Last week was an eventful one for the folks at Maine's WVII and WFVX: Two anchors at the Maine TV stations resigned together on the air.

At the end of the 6 p.m. newscast, Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio thanked viewers and said that departing together was the best alternative because of some “recent developments.”

Consiglio told the Bangor Daily News that he quit because “I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that.”

Local conservative talk-show host and Best of Tucson winner Jon Justice is, apparently of the opinion that this cartoon by Arizona Daily Star political cartoonist David Fitzsimmons is an indicator that he "needs mental health" (sic).

I'm going to assume that Mr. Justice means "mental help," but hey, his mind was moving faster than fingers. I get it.

But let's take a look at this with a less hyper-sensitive eye here, folks (I can't believe I actually have to do this for some people) and we'll break it down after the jump.

While all of Arizona is usually always on the same page about everything (insert sarcastic wink here) for most of the year, the one exception is Rivalry Week.

When Arizona and Arizona State — heretofore dubbed by former Weekly web editor Dan Gibson as the Girls Gone Wild University and Casino — meet up on the football field it's much more than a game to determine the winner of the Territorial Cup, or in the case this year a possible berth to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (!!!!!).

It's about bragging rights. It's about hating on people you're normally friends with, except when it comes to their fondness for gold and maroon (a.k.a., piss and blood). And for a lot of Tucsonans, it's a chance to for one brief moment to try and get past that inferiority complex so many of us have in relation to Phoenix and how they get all the good stuff like Fat Burger, and fake lakes that pop a leak, and Spring Training.

Every inch of the local mainstream media will be weighing in on the UA-ASU game this week, but if you're looking for the best possible insight on Friday, one needs only to hop on Twitter and follow the feed of @FakeRichRod.

Some pearls of wisdom of late:

What should I drink out of the Territorial Cup after the game on Friday night?
— Fake Rich Rodriguez (@FakeRichRod) November 19, 2012

I didn't tip the ASwho grad that delivered my pizza for lunch. #BeatTheScummies
— Fake Rich Rodriguez (@FakeRichRod) November 19, 2012

FakeRichRod also has found a way to tweet whilst calling plays for one of the country's top-rated offenses:

I hope Matt Scott pukes on Todd Graham on Friday after scoring a touchdown #BestCelebrationEver
— Fake Rich Rodriguez (@FakeRichRod) November 18, 2012

FakeRichRod is, by far, the best source of information about UA football, and not just this week. And it's certainly quicker to the interwebs than one unnamed daily newspaper who's Twitter account tells you the score at the end of the first quarter ... late in the second quarter.

In the interest of fairness, I did search for a Fake Todd Graham account, of which there are four variations. With a combined 188 followers, 151 of which I think are following someone pretending to be a different Todd Graham.

We're back on the Daily show radar this week. Al Madrigal returned. Oh, Daily Show, thank you for loving Arizona:

It would be better if Viggo Mortensen made an appearance, but the four-minute Air New Zealand safety video that's all Hobbit is still beautiful. If only Arizona was Hobbit 24/7, well, except Smaug. Oh, yeah, we have Jan Brewer and Tom Horne. Same thing.

Enjoy:

I know that we at the Weekly tend to be as honest as possible when it comes to restaurant reviews, resulting in occasional hurt feelings from some folks, but man, the New York Times' Pete Wells completely brutalized the Times Square restaurant of celebrity chef/television host/hedgehog-lookalike Guy Fieri, Guy's American Kitchen & Bar.

An excerpt from the Times review, which takes the form of a "do you understand what is going on here?" series of questions addressed to Fieri:

What is going on at this new restaurant of yours, really?

Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles? When you cruise around the country for your show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it?

Or is it all an act? Is that why the kind of cooking you celebrate on television is treated with so little respect at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar?

Read more, as well as some stunningly positive customer reviews, after the jump.

For Jimmy Boegle, opportunity has come knocking again. After nearly 10 years as editor of the Tucson Weekly, Boegle has decided it’s time to pursue a venture of his own: He’s launching an alternative news source in Southern California’s Coachella Valley.

“There are more than 400,000 people in the Coachella Valley,” Boegle said. “There are seven, eight or nine different municipalities. It has this weird, segregated diversity, which isn’t unlike Tucson in some ways. Palm Springs is very gay. Cathedral City and Palm Desert are more working-class. Indio and Coachella have a lot of Hispanic folks. The area is urban; it’s a couple of hours from L.A. But the real attraction for me is, I’m a news guy. And when I look at the news products right now in the Coachella Valley-Palm Springs area, there’s really nothing in print or online I’ve found, outside of the not-very-good Gannett daily, doing honest-to-goodness ethical (journalism).

“(Some) other publications sell their coverage. You can pay to get a story done about you, and that’s wrong and unethical. I want to go in, and I want to do it right. I’ve seen what good, ethical publications can do for a community in terms of letting people know about the art and the food and culture, and the bad things going on as well. I can do that with the Coachella Valley Independent.”

Boegle, 37, has seen the impact of alt-weeklies, both while growing up and working in his hometown of Reno, Nev., and during his 10-year stint with the Weekly, a publication he argues has played a significant role in Tucson’s arts community since its launch in 1984. He hopes the Coachella Valley Independent will be the publication that helps spark a similar blossoming there.

“The area doesn’t have a true weekly like the Tucson Weekly,” said Boegle, who has been considering the venture for the past five years. He said he had been holding off largely because of the uncertain state of the industry and the economy.

“I’ve decided I’m going to jump and do my own thing. It’s online (cvindependent.com) in beta right now, but will be more ready to go in January when I’m doing it full time,” he said. “The goal is to do online, get an audience, show people what we can do, and eventually transition to a print product, hopefully in the fall of 2013.”