Seattle Weekly food critic Hanna Raskin led a panel of alt-weekly scribes at the Association of Food Journalists' conference last week in Charleston. In addition, several alt-weekly food writers took home awards at the conference.
Among the finalists are Sarah Fenske for her work that appeared in Phoenix New Times, former Riverfront Times writer Kristen Hinman, and SF Weekly staff writer Peter Jamison.
The Association of Food Journalists last week named the winners of its 2009 Awards Competition at a banquet in New Orleans. Seattle Weekly's Jonathan Kauffman won first place for Best Newspaper Restaurant Criticism and Creative Loafing (Atlanta)'s Besha Rodell took home first for Best Newspaper Food Feature. (Riverfront Times' Kristen Hinman took third in that category.) Kauffman's victory marks the fourth year in a row that a Village Voice Media paper has won the Best Newspaper Restaurant Criticism category.
Kristen Hinman won her second James Beard Foundation Award last night. She took first place in "Newspaper Feature without Recipes" for a profile of Missouri hog farmer Russ Kremer and the Ozark Mountain Pork Cooperative. For a full list of Beard winners, click here.
AAN members are once again well-represented in the list of nominees for this year's James Beard Foundation Awards for Journalism. The finalists: L.A. Weekly's Pulitzer-prize winning critic Jonathan Gold in the Restaurant Reviews; Kristen Hinman of Riverfront Times in Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes; and the Chicago Reader's Mike Sula in Multimedia Food Journalism. Winners will be announced at a May 4 gala in New York.
Earlier this month, the National Association of Black Journalists announced the winners of the 2007 Salute to Excellence Awards, which "recognize exemplary coverage of people of color or issues in the African Diaspora." Riverfront Times took home two first-place awards: Kristen Hinman for her "Basketball by the Book" series, in the Enterprise division; and Ben Westhoff for "Ace of Spaides," in the Business division. Seattle Weekly's Nina Shapiro also placed first in the Feature division for "Schooling the District."
AAN members are well-represented in the 2006 awards given out by the Education Writers Association, with a near-sweep of "Feature, News Feature or Issue Package" for papers under 100,000 circulation. In that category, Todd Spivak of the Houston Press took home First Place for "Cut Short," while Special Citations were awarded to Willamette Week's Beth Slovic for "Illegal Scholar," the Houston Press' Margaret Downing for "Opt In, Opt Out," and New Times Broward-Palm Beach's Kelly Cramer for "FCAT Scratch Fever." Kristen Hinman of Riverfront Times received a First Place award in the "Investigative Reporting" category for her Vashon High School Series.
The prestigious James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards were announced Monday at an awards reception in New York (which was hosted by none other than AAN's favorite speaker, Cokie Roberts) and four Village Voice Media writers were awarded first-place medallions. Jonathan Kauffman of East Bay Express, Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly, Kristen Hinman of Riverfront Times, and Dara Moskowitz of City Pages triumphed in four of the seven categories in which alt-weeklies were eligible to participate. And one of the other winners -- The Times-Picayune's Brett Anderson -- formerly did his writing in the pages of the Washington City Paper.
