In a piece for Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, Craig Cox weaves a review of David Carr's The Night of the Gun with personal anecdotes about Carr (a former editor for the now-defunct Twin Cities Reader, City Pages' crosstown rival) and the Twin Cities alt-weekly scene of the 1980s. "Once you were accepted into the club as a freelancer or -- dream of dreams -- a staffer at one of the two local alternative weeklies, you were plugged into the local pop culture scene in a way no one else was," Cox writes. "You didn't have to be high or narcissistic back then to feel good about working six days a week, every week (as we did at City Pages) for three or four hundred bucks. It was kind of an exclusive fraternity."
The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists awarded City Pages top honors in eight categories last week, including newsroom-wide wins for Best Website and Best Special Section. The paper also finished first in the Business Feature; Photojournalism: Pictoral; Short News Feature; Sports Feature; Sports Spot News; and Use of Multimedia categories.
In the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists' Page One Contest, the alt-weekly came out on top in News and Feature - Investigative; Sports - Feature; Graphics and Illustrations - Spot News; and Photojournalism - Portrait. The paper also had four second- and third-place finishes.
City Pages' Dara Moskowitz was the big winner last night as the annual James Beard Foundation Media Awards were announced in New York. She took home first place prizes in two categories: Newspaper, Newsletter, or Magazine Columns and Newspaper Writing on Spirits, Wine, or Beer (which she shared with The Wall Street Journal's Eric Felten). The Cleveland Scene's Elaine Cicora placed first in the Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes category. This marks the second year in a row that Moskowitz has won a James Beard Award.
The path between journalism and politics is well worn, and now two pols with alt-press connections have taken over City Halls. R.T. Rybak, erstwhile publisher of the defunct Twin Cities Reader, was elected mayor of Minneapolis, and Charles Meeker, brother of Willamette Week publisher Richard Meeker and a former Independent Weekly shareholder, seized the reins in Raleigh, N.C. Not since former Pacific Sun reporter Barbara Boxer was elected to the U.S. Senate have AANies made such political hay.
