2025 AAN Awards

Announcing the 2025 AAN Award Finalists

Seven Days, Willamette Week and The Inlander Lead a Pack of High Quality Editorial and Design

The judges have read and reviewed and thought and crunched the exactly 750 submissions we received this year—up more than 20% over 2024.

Here are the finalists in the 2025 AAN Awards.

With an eye-watering 14 finalists nods, Seven Days (Burlington, Vt.) once again leads the field, followed closely by perennial award gatherer Willamette Week (Portland, Ore.), with nine finalists. The Inlander (Spokane, Wash.) notched six, while Arkansas Times, Nashville Scene and Austin Chronicle each pulled in five.

Newcomer LOOKOUT (Phoenix, Ariz.), Las Vegas Weekly and San Antonio Current each grabbed four awards while Tucson Sentinel, Mississippi Free Press, Eugene Weekly, Triad City Beat (Greensboro, N.C.), Reno News & Review, Charleston City Paper and Lagniappe (Mobile, Ala.) have all clocked three. Congrats to all of our finalists and thanks to everyone who entered this year!

Order of placement will be revealed on July 11, 2025, during our awards luncheon at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin. Join us!

CORRECTION: The newsletter EW Weekly is a publication of Eugene Weekly, not “Erie Weekly,”—especially interesting given that the latter doesn’t exist. (Todd!) Apologies to both EW and Erie Reader for the error. TAS

AAN Excellence in Journalism Award

  • Decker Towers coverage — Seven Days
  • The Stupidest Scandal: How a $19K lectern stole the show — Arkansas Times
  • House of Cans — Willamette Week

Arts Criticism (Jim Ridley Award)

  • Pete Vonder Haar film criticism — Houston Press
  • Film Reviews by D. Patrick Rodgers — Nashville Scene
  • Season’s Bleedings — Willamette Week
  • Theater reviews by Katherine Varga — City Magazine

Arts Feature – Long Form

  • Made in Japan: How a Vergennes boatbuilder is saving an endangered tradition — and got a credit in the new “Shōgun” — Seven Days
  • Amid a Volatile Industry, Burlington May Lose Its Only Cinema — Seven Days
  • Legendary pro skater, punk rocker and Des Moines local Mike Vallely is living his teenage dream — Little Village
  • Tucson Vogue creates a hub for queer culture in Southern Arizona — Tucson Sentinel

Arts Feature – Shorter Form

  • Sasha Velour — Charleston City Paper
  • A Look Inside Christine Farrell’s Rare Comics Collection — Seven Days
  • Everybody Gets In—Ray Roa — Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
  • Ballet and hip hop duet for Swan Prjct — Little Village

Beat Reporting

  • How Arizona Still Practices Conversion Therapy In Plain Site — LOOKOUT
  • Portland Voter-Owned Elections — Willamette Week
  • Vallejo Sun reporting on homelessness — Vallejo Sun
  • Central Florida Labor Reporting — Orlando Weekly

Cannabis Coverage

  • Blunts and Rolling Paper in The Paper. — The Paper ABQ
  • Ken Picard — Seven Days
  • Mississippi’s Young Cannabis Industry Struggles to Gain Footing — Mississippi Free Press
  • Up in smoke — City Magazine

Column (Billy Manes Award)

  • From the Publisher — Seven Days
  • Seriously? — North Coast Journal
  • Hunger and Violence Dominate Daily Life at USP McCreary Where D.C. Men Are Incarcerated, I Started Using Heroin in Prison. Now the Federal Bureau of Prisons Won’t Provide Treatment, and After Exposing a Lack of Addiction Treatment in Prison, I Was Sent to — Washington City Paper
  • CMarie Fuhrman Columns — Inlander

Column – Political

  • The Angry Poodle Column — Santa Barbara Independent
  • Mark My Words — Philadelphia Gay News
  • Damn the Torpedoes – Political columns by Rob Holbert — Lagniappe
  • Column by Betsy Phillips — Nashville Scene

Environmental Coverage

  • Recent Catastrophes Prompt New Thinking About Ways to Manage Vermont’s Flood-Prone Landscape — Seven Days
  • Mobile Baykeeper Takes on U.S. Army Corps over ‘Federal Mud Dumping’ — Lagniappe
  • Bingham Park — Triad City Beat
  • Decarbonizing Cattle — Inlander

Explanatory Journalism

  • Getting On: An Aging Population Is Transforming Vermont’s Schools, Workplaces and Communities — Seven Days
  • ”Plantations to Prison Farms: How Far Have We Come?” — Austin Chronicle
  • Spray Anything — Willamette Week
  • Stalked — Eugene Weekly

Feature Story – Long Form

  • Japanese WWII flags — Triad City Beat
  • Frank Li’s Great Escape — Willamette Week
  • Why Israel turned to Archaelogists after October 7 — J. The Jewish News of Northern California
  • Shadow wrestling: Two Chico men grappling with the loss of fathers find solace and support on the mat — Chico News & Review

Feature Story – Shorter Form

  • In Secretive Facebook Groups, Vermont Women Are Crowdsourcing Men’s Red Flags — Seven Days
  • The Lost Ladies of Lakeview Cemetery: Holli Bushnell is on a mission to give dead women back their names — Seven Days
  • SLO Superior Court’s certified facility dog, Edgar, eases the legal process for survivors of trauma — New Times San Luis Obispo
  • On election night, the guy who took down Mark Robinson — Triad City Beat

Food Writing

  • Food writing by Rhett Brinkley — Arkansas Times
  • Food Writing — Nina Rangel — San Antonio Current
  • Food Writing by Amanda Waltz — Pittsburgh City Paper
  • Durham Food Coverage: A beloved restaurant’s final meal, a staff quits en masse, and a 2004 Rachel Ray episode revisited. — Indy Week

Health Care Reporting

  • Nevada’s first psychedelic church: As activists push for full legality, these spiritual leaders plan to offer psilocybin mushrooms for therapeutic use under the religious freedom act — Reno News & Review
  • Coverage of the high cost of health care — Monterey County Weekly
  • Chippewa Valley Responds to Hospital Closure Crisis — Volume One
  • Every Other Day — Inlander

Investigative Reporting (David Carr Award)

  • The secret death of Darryl Dean Mefferd — Open Vallejo
  • Housing Investigations — Washington City Paper
  • Jackson’s Water Crisis — Mississippi Free Press
  • Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point — San Francisco Public Press

LGBTQ+ Coverage

  • How Conversion Therapy Is Still Practiced in Arizona — LOOKOUT
  • Bias in Arizona’s Sex Education — LOOKOUT
  • A rural Appalachian town gets its first Pride celebration — Smoky Mountain News
  • Understanding the ’I’: What it means to be intersex and how they are often forgotten in the larger LGBTQ+ conversation — Watermark Out News

Music Writing

  • Matt Bieker Music Writing — Reno News & Review
  • Music Writing by Daniel Grear — Arkansas Times
  • Music Writing by P.J. Kinzer — Nashville Scene
  • The Beat Goes On: Mississippi’s Music — Mississippi Free Press

News Story – Long Form

  • The Fight for Decker Towers: Drug users and homeless people have overrun a low-income high-rise. Residents are gearing up to evict them — Seven Days
  • Shocking — Public entities in Alabama have seen electrical costs skyrocket at twice national average — Lagniappe
  • What Happened in Hoover Jail — Willamette Week
  • USAA and Federal Regulators — San Antonio Current

News Story – Shorter Form

  • In Land We Trust: Redtail Ranch Development Raises Concerns About Living on Old Oil and Gas Land — Yellow Scene Magazine
  • Legal but Unethical: Rep. Ken Calvert Has a History of Sending Taxpayer-Funded Campaign Pieces in the Days Leading up to Elections, Using a Congressional-Rules Loophole — Coachella Valley Independent
  • Double tragedy — Charleston City Paper
  • Eye of the Tiger — Willamette Week

Right-Wing Extremism Coverage

  • Voting under siege: Conspiracy theories and the refusal to certify results threaten Washoe County elections — Reno News & Review
  • The Right-Wingification of UT — Austin Chronicle
  • ‘Take Back Our Border’ Convoy — San Antonio Current
  • Doomed to Repeat It: Extremism Throughout America’s History — Erie Reader

Solutions Journalism

  • Guaranteed Income — North Coast Journal
  • Can We Fix Mental Health Crisis Response in the Hudson Valley? — Chronogram
  • Tucson Community Bail Fund — Tucson Sentinel
  • ‘The system is broken’: How one community organization fights wage theft in Central Florida — Orlando Weekly

Cover Design

  • Source Weekly Cover Art — Source Weekly
  • Nashville Scene Cover Design — Nashville Scene
  • Austin Chronicle covers — Austin Chronicle
  • Inlander Cover Design — Inlander

Online Story Presentation

  • True Stories: The American Documentary and Animation Film Festival Is Bringing an International Slate of Movies to the Palm Springs Cultural Center – Coachella Valley Independent
  • Do newly competitive legislative races in Wisconsin drive civic engagement? – Isthmus

Editorial Layout – Print

  • Radicalized Online – Las Vegas Weekly
  • Back to School – Las Vegas Weekly
  • Skate City – Las Vegas Weekly
  • Board Game – Charleston City Paper

Illustration

  • Building Nevada — Las Vegas Weekly
  • Volunteering is Good for You — Isthmus
  • Welcome to the Fabulous Las Daysies — Seven Days
  • Psychedelic Healing — Austin Chronicle

Photography

  • The Art of Mexican Horsemanship — Eugene Weekly
  • Dave Decker—Creative Loafing Tampa Bay — Creative Loafing Tampa Bay
  • Erick Doxey Photo Portfolio — Inlander
  • Eyes on Arizona’s Borderlands — Tucson Sentinel

Ad Marketing Campaign (Created In-House)

  • Free Press Forever — Austin Chronicle
  • Do Good List — Willamette Week
  • Whiskey Business San Antonio — San Antonio Current

Newsletter – Digital

  • The LOOKOUT Newsletter — LOOKOUT
  • The Daily Buzz — Burlington Buzz
  • Daily Dot — Bluedot Living
  • EW Extra — Eugene Weekly

Special Publication – Print

  • Welcome to Fabulous Las Daysies: The Locals’ Guide to Vermont — Seven Days
  • Block, Street & Building: The Best of New Urbanism in Arkansas — Arkansas Times
  • Inlander Annual Manual — Inlander
  • Q Health — Watermark Out News

Special Section – Print

  • Where the Sun Don’t Shine: Seven Days Guide to the 2024 Solar Eclipse — Seven Days
  • The 50th Anniversary Issue: A half-century of news, politics, food and culture — Arkansas Times
  • Best of Nashville — Nashville Scene
  • Willamette Week Turns 50 — Willamette Week