BEST FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME

Miami New Times staff writer Celeste Fraser Delgado was arrested and jailed last November as she was reporting on the protests associated with the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit. While other reporters were "embedded" with police, Delgado was in handcuffs, charged with the misdemeanors "failure to obey a lawful command" and "resisting arrest without violence," accusations she vehemently denied. After a sleepless night in the slammer, she was released from Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, but not before local NBC affiliate WTVJ (Channel 6) and the Associated Press had reported on the incident. With the clock ticking on her fifteen minutes, Delgado quickly penned a 2700-word story about her experience. Following its publication ("Jailhouse Crock," November 27, 2003), Newsweek quoted her and PBS documentarians interviewed her, as did the Sun-Sentinel, ABC affiliate WPLG (Channel 10), Univision, and Telemundo. Later she filed a formal complaint with Miami's Civilian Investigative Panel, but by then her time was up.