These deserving honorees and a few surprise “Spirit of AAN”recipients will be celebrated at the 2026 AAN Awards ceremony in Palm Springs.
AAN is pleased to announce our 2026 AAN Honors recipients. Each was nominated by colleagues and fellow AAN members who know their work, with final selections made by a committee of the AAN Board. This year’s honorees reflect what the best AAN publishers invariably give their communities: fearless journalism, steady leadership, and a refusal to quit when the easy choice is to walk away.
We’ll present these honors on Thursday, July 9, during the 2026 AAN Awards ceremony in Palm Springs, California, along with several yet-to-be-revealed “Spirit of AAN” honorees.
John Heaston Lifetime Achievement Award
Fletcher Farrar, Illinois Times
It’s fair to say Fletcher Farrar has given the majority of his life to the Illinois Times. Farrar bought the Illinois Times about 18 months after it launched in 1975, became one of AAN’s founding members and spent the next half-century making sure his community never went a week without the paper—through multiple recessions, digital upheaval and a pandemic that shuttered papers across the country. When COVID hit, Farrar stopped taking a salary rather than cut the pay of his staff, including a sales team with little to sell. In September 2025, Illinois Times marked 50 years without missing a single week in print. Rather than cash out, Farrar converted the paper to nonprofit ownership, working with the American Journalism Project and a local community foundation to launch a new organization, Local Journalism Matters, transferring the company’s assets to it in 2026 before moving into the board chair’s seat.
As publisher Michelle Ownbey put it, Farrar “has devoted his entire adult life to advocating for, and preserving, local journalism.”
John Saltas, Salt Lake City Weekly
By every reasonable measure, the Salt Lake City Weekly shouldn’t exist. It’s an unapologetically alternative voice in the heart of so-conservative-their-weird-about-it Utah. But for more than 40 years, John Saltas has ensured that voice had volume. As founder of City Weekly, Saltas built one of the defining independent outlets in the Mountain West and helped shape SLC itself. Saltas has been recognized by the local visitors’ bureau as one of 25 people who shaped downtown and was named one of “100 Catalyst Utahns.” He is, by his son’s (publisher Pete Saltas) account, deeply allergic to recognition, which makes this one easy to give and hard for him to dodge. What he won’t dodge is his love of AAN and alternative media.
“Without AAN and the people he met, there would be no City Weekly,” Pete wrote.
Publisher of the Year
Erik Cushman, Monterey County Weekly
In 2025, Monterey County Weekly turned a profit, shared it with staff, hired three new employees, and launched a daily digital news product for Salinas and the Salinas Valley in both English and Spanish, all while much of the industry was cutting. The Weekly took First Place for General Excellence among large weeklies at the California Journalism Awards for the second year running, and Publisher Erik Cushman was named to the Governor’s Civic Media Advisory Board, helping steer $20 million to California journalism organizations. Meanwhile, Monterey County NOW is their daily newsletter born in the pandemic that never went away; the “Weekly Insiders” reader-support program modeled on public radio has drawn more than 3,000 supporters; and the editorial staff has grown to 9.5 FTEs, the largest in the paper’s 38-year history.
His own newsroom said it best in the nomination they wrote for him: “We think he’s a badass and a great leader. Do your judges really need anything more than that?”
And a few surprises…
Join us on July 9th in Palm Springs to celebrate Fletcher Farrar, John Saltas, and Erik Cushman, along with the “Spirit of AAN” honorees we’ll reveal on-site along with the winners of the 2026 AAN Awards—and a full bar!
