AAN News

Four AAN Members Clean Up at the Lone Star Awardsnew

The Houston Press and Fort Worth Weekly were the big winners in this year's awards competition sponsored by the Houston Press Club. The Press won a total of 16 awards. In the big papers division, it finished first for Business Story and General Commentary/Criticism, while staff writer Craig Malisow was named Print Journalist of the Year (his colleague Chris Vogel was runner-up.) In the art and web divisions open to all papers, the Press took home first-place awards for Feature Story, Hard News Reporting, Photo Package and Sports Photo. The Weekly, competing in the small papers division, won a total of 11 awards, including first-place finishes in Feature Story, Investigative Reporting, Politics/Government, Sports Story and Business Story (which it swept). Also in the large division, the Dallas Observer won four awards, including firsts for Feature Story, Sports Story; in the small division, San Antonio Current took home three awards.
Houston Press Club (pdf)  |  07-02-2009  8:51 am  |  Honors & Achievements

AAN Elects New President, Fills Ten Board Seats

At the annual meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies on Saturday, June 27, Willamette Week's Mark Zusman was elected the association's new president. He succeeds Metroland's Stephen Leon, who will take the advisory role of Immediate Past President. The membership voted on nine other board seats on Saturday, including two that were created just minutes earlier when AAN's bylaws were amended. (FULL STORY)
AAN News  |  07-01-2009  2:42 pm  |  Association News

Full List of 2009 AltWeekly Awards Winners Released

L.A. Weekly led the large-circulation division for the second year in a row with four first-place wins, while Santa Fe Reporter led the small-circulation division, also with four first-place wins. (FULL STORY)
AAN News  |  07-01-2009  10:12 am  |  Association News

Long Island Press Wins Casey Medalnew

The alt-weekly won this year's Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism in the non-daily category for its story on the growing heroin epidemic among Long Island's youth -- a story the judges called "the epitome of public service journalism." The story -- "Long Highland" -- also won the AltWeekly Award for Public Service last week in Tucson. The Dallas Observer and New Times Broward-Palm Beach received honorable mentions in the Casey Medal competition, which recognizes "exemplary reporting on children and families in the U.S."
The Journalism Center on Children & Families  |  07-01-2009  9:01 am  |  Honors & Achievements

Two Newspapers Voted into AAN

At the annual meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies this weekend in Tucson, AAN members approved the membership applications of Inland Empire Weekly of Corona, Calif., and Edmonton's See Magazine. In addition, the membership status of six current member papers that had changed hands in the last two years was affirmed. (FULL STORY)
AAN News  |  06-30-2009  3:19 pm  |  Association News

Lucy Dalglish Lays Out Her Biggest Post-Bush Worries at Convention

At Saturday's First Amendment Lunch in Tucson, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press executive director Lucy Dalglish expressed relief that the Bush administration was no longer in Washington, but said that challenges remain for open-government advocates. (FULL STORY)
AAN News  |  06-30-2009  1:28 pm  |  Association News

Alt-Weekly Alums Come Together at Seattle News Websitenew

Publicola was started in January by Josh Feit, a former news editor of The Stranger, to cover state and local politics in a time where fewer reporters are ensconced in state houses across the country. Feit has attracted some "significant" money, and recently hired another Stranger alum, Erica Barnett, as a full-time staff reporter.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer  |  06-30-2009  10:16 am  |  Industry News

Longtime Los Angeles Journo Coming Home to Edit L.A. Weeklynew

Drex Heikes, who served the Los Angeles Times for 18 years as the Sunday magazine's editor and foreign affairs editor in the paper's Washington bureau, has been named L.A. Weekly's next editor. He will start in August. The position will allow a homecoming of sorts for Heikes: He left L.A. in 2005 to work at the Las Vegas Sun, which recently won a Public Service Pulitzer for an investigation he assigned and edited. "Village Voice Media publishes vital newspapers because it has upheld the vision of its founding editor, Mike Lacey," Heikes says. "Mike is a reporter at heart. His mission has never wavered. First you report, and you report hard. Then you write -- and you do it as a storyteller."
L.A. Weekly  |  06-30-2009  9:24 am  |  Industry News

Five VVM Columnists Honored in National Column-Writing Awardsnew

SF Weekly's Katy St. Clair took home a first-place Humor column award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in its annual contest. Roy Edroso of The Village Voice, Stephen Lemons of Phoenix New Times, and Chuck Strouse and Elyse Wanshel, both of Miami New Times, were also recognized by the group.
National Society of Newspaper Columnists  |  06-30-2009  8:31 am  |  Honors & Achievements

Salt Lake City Weekly Wins State Awards, Including Best Reporter

Salt Lake City Weekly won a total of 19 awards in the Utah Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists' annual awards on June 12. The Weekly's Stephen Dark was named Best Newspaper Reporter (his colleague Ted McDonough received an honorable mention in the same category). "Dark had the most diverse and interesting subject matter," the judges wrote. "His ability to tell a story in a clean and compelling manner also stood out." The alt-weekly also won first-place awards for Consumer Reporting, Government Reporting and Military Reporting. (FULL STORY)
Salt Lake City Weekly Press Release  |  06-30-2009  8:24 am  |  Press Releases

At Awards Lunch, Dan Savage Does 'Savage Love Live'

At the 14th annual AltWeekly Awards luncheon today in Tucson, there were no half-naked men and no bottles of Jim Beam. But that didn't stop The Stranger editorial director and syndicated columnist Dan Savage from once again making the ceremony his own as he reprised his role as emcee. (FULL STORY)
AAN News  |  06-26-2009  5:50 pm  |  Association News

Membership Committee Recommends Two Papers for Admission to AAN

Of the five newspapers that applied for AAN membership this year, the Membership Committee is recommending that two be voted into the association: See Magazine and Inland Empire Weekly. The committee is also recommending that six current members who've experienced ownership changes be reaffirmed. AAN members will vote on these applications, as well as other matters, at Saturday afternoon's Annual Meeting. In addition, the Membership Committee is recommending that AAN take a look at allowing only-online publications to join the association. UPDATE (3:17 PM EST): The membership committee's report as originally uploaded was incorrect when it said that See's owner, Great West Newspapers, was "the largest" media chain in Canada. It's a large company, but not the largest in the country. The document in the resource library has been updated with the correct information. (FULL STORY)
AAN News  |  06-26-2009  1:14 pm  |  Industry News

AAN Convention Gets Rolling

This morning's sessions have begun, and with them, the first full day of AAN's 32nd Annual Convention in Tucson is on its way. We'll have updates here at AAN.org over the next two days; for pictures of the confab, visit our Flickr page. To get short but sweet updates from various Twitterers here in Tucson, search for the hashtag #aan.
AAN News  |  06-26-2009  12:56 pm  |  Association News

Writer Remembers Covering Stonewall for The Voicenew

We mentioned Lucian Truscott IV a few days back when looking at the Village Voice's complicated role in the watermark LGBT rights event at the Stonewall Inn 40 years ago. In a New York Times op-ed published yesterday, he remembers the scene and wonders why no one else covered it. "I blundered straight into the first moments of the police raid ... even a newly minted second lieutenant of infantry could see that it was a story," Truscott writes. "Amazingly, there was no TV coverage and only a few paragraphs in the city’s daily papers. Myths and controversies have arisen in the vacuum left by the mainstream news media."
The New York Times  |  06-26-2009  10:41 am  |  Industry News

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