Trevor Aaronson is a staff writer for New Times Broward-Palm Beach. He has won about a dozen journalism honors, including a recent first in news in the National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence contest and a third in sports in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Awards. He is a Florida native who graduated from college at age 20. FEATURE STORY

Kris Adams is the art director for the Charleston City Paper. She has had several different positions in the graphic design world over the last eight years and considers her job at the Charleston City Paper to be the most enjoyable and rewarding. This is her first entry in the AltWeekly Awards contest. COVER DESIGN AND EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Beth Allen is art director/production manager at the Pacific Sun. She has worked at alternative weeklies for over 10 years and loves it. In addition to designing covers and making ads, she plays bass in a punk rock band, loves getting tattooed, does Bikram yoga and has a fetish for custom vans. COVER DESIGN

Kirk Anderson is a freelance political cartoonist whose weekly cartoon “Lance Boyle” appears in City Pages of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Kirk spent eight years as staff cartoonist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, USA Today and hundreds of newspapers and magazines throughout the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries. Anderson’s claim that his cartoons singularly brought down the Berlin Wall remains a controversial perspective among scholars of history. CARTOON

Susan Clark Armstrong is an investigative reporter at Folio Weekly in Jacksonville, Fla. She covers — and uncovers — corruption around northeast Florida, specifically the political hotbed known as Clay County. INVESTIGATIVE

Eric Barton is a staff writer at New Times Broward-Palm Beach. A native of New Hampshire, Barton began his journalism career at a small-town newspaper in Louisiana and worked at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune before joining New Times three years ago. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the International Center for Journalists, a first-place award in feature reporting from the Education Writers Association and two first-place Green Eyeshade Awards. FEATURE STORY

Brenda Bell, formerly a freelance writer based in the Seattle area, now lives in Austin, Texas. She has written for the Texas Observer, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly and other publications. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Alec Hanley Bemis lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has written for The New York Times and The New Yorker in addition to L.A. Weekly, and he has taught in New York University’s cultural reporting and criticism program. He also runs Brassland, a record label (http://www.brassland.org). MUSIC CRITICISM

Jake Bernstein fell into journalism by accident as a way to feed himself and indulge his curiosity while living in Central America. Since then, journalism has taken him to Pasadena, Texas; Miami; and, currently, Austin, Texas, where he is executive editor of The Texas Observer. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Justin Berton has been a staff writer and columnist at the East Bay Express since 2001. He previously worked at Metro in San Jose, Calif., and at Westword in Denver. His articles have appeared in Maxim, Kitchen Sink and Alternet.org. FEATURE STORY

Jay Bevenour is an illustrator, cartoonist, and educator whose work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, most of them quite reputable. “Hoagie Dip,” his editorial cartoon for the Philadelphia Weekly, focuses on the personalities and goings-on in the so-called “City of Brotherly Love.” When not working on his artistic endeavors, he roams the streets of his beloved hometown, snapping obscure reference photos and protecting its good people from his arch nemesis, Sylvester Stallone. CARTOON

Steve Billings is a freelancer who writes about food for Metro Santa Cruz. A graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., with a degree in English, he learned about food as a waiter at fine dining establishments in Portland and Los Angeles and at other restaurants. He now manages a tasting room for a Santa Cruz winery, Bonny Doon Vineyard. FOOD WRITING

Jeffrey C. Billman is a staff writer for Orlando Weekly. A three-time finalist for the 2005 AltWeekly Awards, he also won three awards in 2004, including a first for religion reporting, a second for investigative reporting, and an honorable mention for media reporting. FORMAT BUSTER

Nell Boeschenstein is a staff writer at C-Ville Weekly, where she began her journalism career as an intern in 2003. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College. FORMAT BUSTER

Steve Bogira has written for the Chicago Reader since 1981, focusing on the urban poor. He is a former Alicia Patterson Fellow and the winner of many awards, including the 1998 first place Alternative Weekly Award for social reporting. His first book, Courtroom 302, was published by Knopf in March. The Economist magazine called it a “brilliant piece of journalism.” COLUMN

Ruben Bolling is the creator of the weekly comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” which appears in about 75 publications. His comic strip won the Alternative Weekly Award for best cartoon (five or more papers) in 2002 and 2003, and this year it is a finalist for the Harvey Award for Best Syndicated Comic Strip or Panel. Bolling’s latest compilation book, Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories, was released in December 2004, and in April, Bolling optioned the film rights of one of his characters, “Harvey Richards, Lawyer for Children,” to New Line Cinema. CARTOON

John Borgmeyer is the senior staff writer at C-Ville Weekly, where he has worked since 1999. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. FORMAT BUSTER AND NEWS STORY-SHORT FORM

Betty Brink has worked as a staff writer for Fort Worth Weekly since the paper’s first year of publication in 1996. A journalist for 36 years, Brink started her career in 1969 as a contributing writer for the mother of all Texas alternatives, The Texas Observer. Her investigative work, which focuses primarily on politics, education, social (in)justice and the environment, has also appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Southern Exposure, The Progressive and several small Texas newspapers. Her stories for the Weekly have garnered numerous awards over the years, including three previous Alternative Newsweekly Awards. She has also been an Investigative Reporters and Editors finalist. When she’s not digging into the smarmy goings-on at city hall or the local school district, Brink is digging in her garden with her husband of 50 years, Charlie, or playing the matriarch at the gatherings of their large, extended family. NEWS STORY-SHORT FORM

David Butow is a regular contributor to Los Angeles CityBeat and a freelance photojournalist based in Los Angeles. As a contract photographer with U.S. News and World Report and a member of the Redux photo agency, he has traveled on assignment to Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His personal work on the Uighur ethnic group in China has been the subject of solo shows in New York and Los Angeles. His prewar photos taken in Iraq and Kurdistan during a trip in 2000 were shown at the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France. During four subsequent trips to Iraq since the start of the initial invasion in 2003, he has worked both as a roving journalist covering issues from the Iraqi civilian perspective as well as an embedded reporter with the United States military. PHOTOGRAPHY

Michael Cary has worked at the San Antonio Current since 2003. His previous journalism experience includes stints at dailies and community weeklies, where he covered city politics. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Eric Celeste is an editor at American Way magazine and a former Dallas Observer associate editor and staff writer. He was also founding editor of The Met, a now-defunct Dallas alternative weekly. He graduated from Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Godfrey Cheshire has written film criticism for The Independent Weekly since 1998. This is his third Alternative Weekly Award nomination for arts criticism; he garnered first place in 2000 and 2001. A member of the National Society of Film Critics, he has also written for The New York Times, Newsweek, Variety, The Village Voice, Film Comment and other publications. ARTS CRITICISM

John E. Citrone is managing editor at Folio Weekly in Jacksonville, Fla. In his 10 years at the paper, he has won two Alternative Weekly Awards and was recently published in The New York Times. Citrone is also a musician and actor with several albums, national tours and indie films to his credit. He has composed scores for three silent films, written the music for a Jacksonville-based in-schools educational program, and written and directed the original play All About Charlie. John also holds the distinction of being the first person to remove his shirt at an Alternative Weekly Awards ceremony. NEWS STORY-LONG FORM

Walter Coker has been photo editor/staff photographer at Folio Weekly for 13 years. In that time, he has won several Alternative Weekly Awards, including a first place in 2003 for his weekly slice-of-life photo feature “Through the Lens.” His work has appeared in publications as varied as The Washington Post and Surfer’s Journal. Walter’s interests outside of work include surfing, world travel, and environmental issues. PHOTOGRAPHY

Lisa M. Collins has worked for Detroit’s Metro Times since 2001 as an investigative and political reporter and the arts and cultural editor. EDUCATION (WILD CARD CATEGORY)

Marc Cooper is an award-winning journalist and author who has covered politics and culture for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Harper’s and The Atlantic to Playboy and Rolling Stone. He is currently news features editor and columnist for L.A. Weekly and contributing editor to The Nation magazine. Cooper also serves as senior fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Shannon Cornman is the chief photographer for Oklahoma Gazette. Her first job in photography involved developing film in labs. From there, she moved on to studio photography and photographing weddings, sports and nature. Cornman returned to Oklahoma City to be near family and is constantly fascinated by the changes of her hometown. COVER DESIGN

Erica Curtis is features editor at City Newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., where she has been a staff member for two years. She edits the majority of City‘s arts and entertainment pieces, produces City‘s special sections and writes about a wide variety of subjects. In the 10.2 hours of personal time she has each week, she writes fiction, walks her dog and hangs out with her physician husband. SPECIAL SECTION

Tom Danehy is a columnist and freelance writer for the Tucson Weekly. He considers himself a scientist by training, a basketball coach by calling and a columnist by accident. He has been writing for the Tucson Weekly for 18 years and has also written for a variety of national publications, including Harper’s and Sports Illustrated. COLUMN

Philip Dawdy is a staff writer at Seattle Weekly, where he covers social issues and law enforcement. Since joining the paper in 2002, he has written about the disappearance of the Northern spotted owl from old-growth forests, the use of non-human primates for biomedical research, lax oversight of the Seattle Police Department and health care. From 1999 to 2002, he was a staff writer at Willamette Week in Portland, Ore., where he covered local government and science. Before becoming a news reporter, Dawdy was a music writer for the San Diego Reader and several national publications, including Guitar Player. Prior to entering journalism in 1996, he worked in accounting for the San Diego City Schools and La Jolla Playhouse. FOOD WRITING

Didier Diels is a student at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism and will be finishing coursework in the fall. His stories have appeared in Los Angeles CityBeat, San Diego CityBeat, the Santa Monica Daily Press and 28th St. Magazine. He is currently interning at the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. FEATURE STORY

The cartoonist known only as Derf grew up in a small town near Akron, Ohio, and went to high school with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Derf was an uninspired student and received a “D” in art for drawing too many cartoons in class. Today his comic strip, “The City,” is one of the most widely read alternative cartoons, appearing regularly in more than 50 publications. They include the Chicago Reader, Phoenix New Times, Westword, Pittsburgh City Paper, Dallas Observer and Washington City Paper. Derf’s humor is unabashedly political, but he is much more an insolent cultural satirist with an uncompromising, blasphemous wit than an angry political commentator. The cartoonist is married to a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and they have two small children. CARTOON

Seth McM. Donlin, the Boston Weekly Dig‘s editor at large, has been with the paper for four years, writing about politics, food, arts and culture. Most recently he’s devoted the vast majority of his considerable intellectual wherewithal to the tech world. His gaming review column “Geeked” is in national syndication, and tech dorks pick up the Dig every week to get his take on the latest doodads. FORMAT BUSTER

Margaret Downing has been editor of the Houston Press for seven years and is on AAN’s Membership Committee. She has won several national, regional and statewide journalism awards and this year coached a soccer team of U-13 girls to the semi-finals of the Eastern District Championship playoffs in Texas. COLUMN

Renee Downing is — by the grace of her husband’s steady job — a columnist and freelance writer for the Tucson Weekly. She lives in Tucson. NEWS STORY-LONG FORM

Enzo DiMatteo is a news editor at NOW Magazine in Toronto. He has written widely on policing, politics and the far-right. He is a winner of three national newspaper awards, including an Amnesty International award for his coverage of human rights in Cuba. FORMAT BUSTER

Susan Cooper Eastman is a staff writer at Folio Weekly in Jacksonville, Fla. She covers issues facing North Florida from Fernandina Beach to St. Augustine. She has written for the Weekly Planet in Tampa, Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach. Her work has been recognized with a second-place award in feature writing from the National Association for Black Journalists, a Green Eyeshade Award for deadline writing, and a Sunshine State Award for magazine writing. ARTS FEATURE

Don Eggert has been art director at Seven Days for more than six years. He studied Russian at Middlebury College but opted for a more fabulous career in graphic design when he realized his job prospects were limited to the National Security Agency and McDonald’s in Moscow. EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Paul Fain is a staff reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. In addition to his previous role as a staff writer for C-Ville Weekly, he has contributed to Washington City Paper, City Limits and Mother Jones magazine. FORMAT BUSTER

Glenn Ferguson has been a professional caricaturist and illustrator for more than 10 years. He lives in Orlando, Fla., where he contributes to Orlando Weekly and manages the caricature concessions at both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios theme parks. At the 2003 and 2004 annual conventions of the National Caricature Network, he won nine awards, including the 2004 Bronze Nosey award for coming in third as overall caricaturist of the year. COVER DESIGN

Celeste Fremon is the author of G-Dog and the Homeboys and a writer for L.A. Weekly. She is a criminal justice fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism and serves on the board of directors for PEN USA. FEATURE STORY

Gilbert Garcia joined the San Antonio Current staff in 2003 as music editor. His story about the guitarist Esteban was featured in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2001. His alt-weekly experience includes editing and writing duties at the Memphis Flyer, Dallas Observer and Phoenix New Times. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Rich Gardner is a freelance writer for City Newspaper in Rochester, N.Y. He thrives on using the social and natural history of his own back yard as subject matter. His Rochester-based stories have been published in an array of U.S. and Canadian publications. ARTS FEATURE

Cole Gerst is a Los Angeles designer, illustrator and L.A. Weekly contributor, who focuses his energy on conceptualizing typography and classic American semiotics into fanciful hand-drawn identities for musicians and the independent culture. EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Jonathan Gold is L.A. Weekly‘s restaurant critic and the author of Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles. He has been a restaurant critic for California, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine and Gourmet, where he was the first food writer ever to be nominated for a general national award in criticism. His restaurant reviews in both magazines and newspapers have been honored with James Beard Awards. Gold also wrote frequently about music and popular culture for Spin, Rolling Stone, Details and Vanity Fair. He contributes to the radio shows Good Food and This American Life. FOOD WRITING

Nick Goodenough is a junior at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, Calif., studying for a master’s degree in visual journalism. Not long after he developed an interest in photography, he became a contributing photographer to the Ventura County Reporter. He covers the local music scene in his photography column, “Nick at Night,” which at first appeared weekly and, now that he’s busier at school, monthly. His photos have also appeared in the Ventura County Star and on various bands’ CD covers and Web sites. PHOTOGRAPHY

Brooke Gray is a high school journalist who interned with Fort Worth Weekly. Her inside knowledge of Fort Worth schools and ability to find teachers willing to be interviewed contributed significantly to Betty Brink’s winning news story “Doing the Math.” NEWS STORY-SHORT FORM

Andrea Grimes graduated from New York University in May and joined the Dallas Observer staff as a full-time fellow. She grew up in Mansfield, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. ARTS FEATURE

Alfred Hall is the former editorial designer for the Charleston City Paper. He now works for the College of Charleston, S.C. COVER DESIGN

Josh Harkinson is a staff writer at the Houston Press. Harkinson is a 2001 graduate of the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a former intern at the Center for Investigative Reporting and Harper’s Magazine. Since he joined the Press in 2003, his work has been in the finalist categories for numerous state and regional awards. NEW STORY-SHORT FORM AND EDUCATION (WILD CARD CATEGORY)

Margot Harrison is a freelance columnist at Seven Days who holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and works as a writer, college teacher and editor. ARTS CRITICISM

Nat Hentoff has written thought-provoking pieces examining everything from international politics to the local jazz scene since joining The Village Voice in 1957. His column “Liberty Beat” is published weekly in the Voice. He also appears weekly in the Washington Times and writes a weekly column for the United Media Syndicate, which reaches 250 papers nationwide. In 2001, Hentoff was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. COLUMN-POLITICAL

Dave Hickey is a writer of fiction and cultural criticism who lives in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. ARTS FEATURE

David Hollenbach is a native of Salisbury, Md., home of poultry magnate Frank Perdue. After high school, Hollenbach moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he studied illustration at Pratt Institute. He received his bachelor of fine arts in 1998. His work has appeared in Communication Arts’ annual American Illustration, and he received a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators. He has been a pretty lucky novice gambler in Atlantic City. He currently resides in Queens. ILLUSTRATION

Inlander Staff. FORMAT BUSTER

Nigel Jaquiss is a reporter for Willamette Week in Portland, Ore., where he has worked since January 1998. Before earning a master’s in journalism at Columbia University in 1997, he traded oil on Wall Street and in Singapore for 11 years. His stories revealing that former Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt had sexually abused a 14-year-old girl 30 years ago won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting and the 2004 Investigative Reporters and Editors Certificate for weekly newspapers. He has also won three first-place National Awards for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association. INVESTIGATIVE

Ben Joravsky, a staff writer for the Chicago Reader, writes “The Works,” a weekly column about politics in Chicago. He has written several books, including Hoop Dreams: A True Story of Hardship & Triumph (Turner, 1995). COLUMN-POLITICAL

Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for The Boston Phoenix and a visiting professor of journalism at Northeastern University. He is the 1999 winner of the Alternative Weekly Award for media reporting and the 2001 winner of the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. Kennedy’s book on dwarfism, Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter’s Eyes, was published by Rodale in 2003. MEDIA CRITICISM

Joe Keohane was offered the editorship of the then-small and marijuana-obsessed Boston’s Weekly Dig following a number of inauspicious stints in hotel desk management, dot-coms and the funeral industry. The fact that he had no relevant industry experience didn’t stop him from taking the job and immediately calling for the removal of all references to intoxicants and sexual congress, along with questionable language and anything that flew in the face of his fast-held Christian beliefs. He was promptly overruled by his staff. FORMAT BUSTER

Stephanie Kinnear recently took the position of interim editor at the Ventura County Reporter. She got her start in the world of alt-weeklies three years ago as an editorial intern at Boston’s Weekly Dig. FEATURE STORY

Donna Ladd is the editor in chief and cofounder of the Jackson Free Press. The native Mississippian wrote for The Village Voice for two years and was the first editor of the Colorado Springs Independent. Her work has appeared in many alternatives around the country, and she won a Society of Professional Journalists award in investigative journalism for work at the Boulder Weekly. She has a master’s from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an emphasis in social justice. FEATURE STORY

Terje Langeland worked for several small daily newspapers, including the Colorado Daily, before joining the Colorado Springs Independent in December 2001. He is the recipient of numerous national and statewide awards, including three Alternative Newsweekly Awards in 2004. Last summer, Langeland quit his job and moved to Japan to teach English. One of his two story packages being honored by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies this year, the investigative piece “Honor Among Thieves,” was filed from Tsuyama, Japan, where he now lives. EDUCATION

L.A. Weekly Staff. FORMAT BUSTER AND SPECIAL SECTION

Michael Little was born in Littlestown, Pa. In addition to writing about music, books and art for the Washington City Paper, he is working on a book about 19th-century Capitol City low life. He lives with his wife and two sons (a surly Chihuahua and portly cat, respectively) in a shamefully small apartment in D.C. ARTS FEATURE

Jennifer Loviglio is a freelance writer for City Newspaper in Rochester, N.Y. She has been writing about city development, politics, the arts, family life and sex for City Newspaper for nearly five years. COLUMN

Melissa Maerz is associate editor at Spin. From 2001 until early 2005, she worked at City Pages (Twin Cities), first as music editor and then as senior arts editor. She has also contributed to The Village Voice, the Chicago Reader and the book Classic Material: The Hip Hop Album Guide. MUSIC CRITICISM

Abraham Mahshie is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Missouri. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth and has interned at the San Antonio Current, Gambit Weekly and papers in South America. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Dave Mann is associate editor of The Texas Observer, where he has worked since January 2003. He previously worked for Fort Worth Weekly and Washington City Paper. A Philadelphia native, he holds a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

J.J. Marley was born in Bangkok, the Royal Kingdom of Thailand. He is a Ringling School of Art dropout but has managed to do pretty well despite that fact. By day he is the art and photo director at Orlando Weekly. By night and weekend he is a crime-fighting disc jockey (and fledgling record-label mogul). He still manages to find time for his gardening and his pursuit of making the perfect Bloody Mary. He enjoys traveling the world with his girlfriend Laura and considers himself almost an expert on Asian Cinema. He is easily distracted by shiny objects and squishy things. His favorite color is chrome. COVER DESIGN AND FORMAT BUSTER

Michael Marsh is an editorial assistant for the Chicago Reader. His articles have appeared in the Reader and other local publications. In 2001, he was a fellow at the Academy for Alternative Journalism, a journalist training program held in conjunction with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and underwritten by the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. FORMAT BUSTER

David Martin is a freelance journalist in Austin, Texas, who has contributed to the San Antonio Current. He is the editor of the Iraq Occupation Watch Information Center Web site at http://www.occupationwatch.org. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Monica McGregor is the art director of the Ventura County Reporter and Arroyo Monthly Magazine in Pasadena, Calif. She won a 2004 Alternative Weekly Award for the editorial layout of Hillary Johnson’s award-winning feature on photographer Horace Bristol, “Eye of the Storm.” EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Paul McMorrow attempted to combat his post-graduation aimlessness by signing up for one of the Boston Weekly Dig‘s infamous “internships.” Amazingly enough, the Boston University history major wound up doing a good deal of actual writing, instead of breaking down or disappearing without so much as a simple “goodbye” like the others. After the internship ended, he wouldn’t stop coming in, so he was given a job as a staff writer and has since become one of the sharpest journalistic needles in the city of Boston. FORMAT BUSTER

Joyce Millman is a television columnist for The Boston Phoenix. She is a two-time finalist for the Pultizer Prize in criticism for columns written while she was the television critic for the San Francisco Examiner. She was also a founding staff member of Salon.com, and she has contributed essays to the NYPD Blue anthology What Would Sipowicz Do? and the forthcoming Alias Assumed and Flirting with Pride & Prejudice (all from BenBella Books). ARTS CRITICISM

Fiona Morgan is a staff writer at The Independent Weekly. Raised in the South, she has also lived in Seattle and San Francisco, where she was an associate editor at Salon.com for three years before returning to her hometown of Durham, N.C., in 2001. Her occasional column “The Monitor” deals with issues of intellectual property, technology and media ownership. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Ann Mullen was a staff writer for the Metro Times in Detroit, Mich., for more than seven years. During her tenure she won several awards for her work. She is now an investigative news producer for a Detroit television station. NEWS-LONG FORM

Bob Norman is a columnist and reporter for New Times Broward-Palm Beach. He has won more than 40 journalism honors, including the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, the Benjamin Fine Award and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. His work has been included in Houghton Mifflin’s anthology Best American Sports Writing and he is a two-time finalist in both the Investigative Reporters & Editors competition and Medill School of Journalism’s John Bartlow Martin Awards. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Steve Palopoli is the former editor of Metro Santa Cruz; he was recently named editor of Metro‘s sister paper, Metro Silicon Valley. A veteran music writer and film critic, he was previously editor of Total Movie & Entertainment Magazine. MUSIC CRITICISM

Sylvia Pfeiffenberger is a contributing writer at The Independent Weekly, where she covers World music and writes a regular column, “Latin Beat.” She also produces and hosts a weekly radio program of salsa, Latin jazz, and Afro-Cuban roots for a Durham, N.C., radio station. MUSIC CRITICISM

Brook Pifer is a photographer based in Orlando, Fla., where her clients include Orlando Weekly and Orlando Sentinel. She travels nationwide to shoot for publications, agencies and major record labels. Her work includes an urban campaign for the edgy sports clothing company Screamline and a photo essay about the life experiences of individuals and families in the gay and lesbian community. COVER DESIGN

Alan Pogue began taking pictures while serving as a medic in Vietnam. A peace activist and documentary photographer based in Austin, Texas, Pogue has been The Texas Observer‘s staff photographer for more than 30 years. PHOTOGRAPHY

Dan Poulson is a 2004 graduate of Brown University, where he wrote for The Brown Daily Herald. He was a research assistant and paralegal for The Boston Phoenix columnist Harvey A. Silverglate. COLUMN-POLITICAL

Emily Pyle is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. She has written about health care, education, pirate radio stations and Christian homes for wayward girls for The Texas Observer. She is also available for children’s birthday parties. NEWS STORY-LONG FORM

Margaret Regan is a freelance writer for the Tucson Weekly, where she covers visual art, dance and border issues. Formerly a staff writer and arts editor at the paper, she has won more than three dozen journalism awards, including an Alternative Weekly first place award for arts criticism in 2003. This fall, her essay on 1930s photographs of Native Americans will appear in the book Picturing Arizona from University of Arizona Press. ARTS FEATURE

Paula Routly had her hands — and mouth — full writing and editing “7 Nights” as co-owner, co-publisher and co-editor of Seven Days newspaper in Burlington, Vt. She is on the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ board of directors and is a member of its Admissions Committee. SPECIAL SECTION

Paul Rubin has been a staff writer at Phoenix New Times since 1985. During that time, he twice has been named Arizona’s journalist of the year and has been a finalist seven other times. His work also has been recognized by the American Bar Association Silver Gavel, Scripps-Howard, Sigma Delta Chi, Best of the West and other national competitions. Rubin is the co-author of Jazz Spoken Here, published by DeCapo Press. NEWS STORY-LONG FORM

Melinda Ruley is a columnist and former staff writer at The Independent Weekly. This is her fifth nomination for an award from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; she placed first for columns in 2000, 2002 and 2004 and had an honorable mention for social reporting in 1997. COLUMN

Rene Spencer Saller, a native of St. Louis, Mo., has been writing about music since she was 15 years old, when she published her first review in the now-defunct fanzine Jet Lag. Her work has appeared in a number of publications over the years, including Riverfront Times, St. Louis Magazine, No Depression and the French-language magazine Les Inrockuptibles. She now writes a weekly record-review column for Illinois Times. She lives in St. Louis with her husband, Christian, and cat, Dagmar Krause. MUSIC CRITICISM

Nancy Santos is a photographer at Charleston City Paper. She graduated from The Art Institute of Boston, where she studied documentary photography. She has been with the City Paper since 1999 and in previous years has won four awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, for photography, editorial layout and photojournalism. COVER DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Rick Sealock was raised in the wilds of Alberta, Canada, and now has a studio in Kitchener, Ontario. His illustrations have won awards from the Society of Illustrators, the Society for News Design and many others. He creates art for Newsweek, GQ, Forbes, Texas Monthly, Sacramento News & Review, Reno News & Review, Apple Computers, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers Records, among many other clients from around the world. ILLUSTRATION

Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former assistant editor at C-Ville Weekly. FORMAT BUSTER

Tara Servatius is a reporter/columnist for Creative Loafing (Charlotte). A J-school graduate of University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, she has won numerous statewide press awards and Green Eyeshade awards from Society of Professional Journalists. She is a fiercely tenacious investigator who routinely scoops the daily paper on important stories and has a genuine impact on local public issues, and she analyzes a mean spreadsheet. EDUCATION

Mara Shalhoup is news editor and was previously a staff writer at Creative Loafing (Atlanta), where she has worked for nearly five years. Topics she has covered include the displacement of low-income families from public housing and the federal government’s increasing reliance on private databases. She was one of three finalists two years running for Atlanta Press Club’s Journalist of the Year. In the fall of 2005, her work will be included in an anthology of alt-weekly stories, Notes from the Underground, to be released by Penguin Books. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Henry Grady School of Journalism and lives in Atlanta. She won two previous awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in 2002. FEATURE STORY

Michael Shavalier is art director at Miami New Times. In his eight years with New Times Media, he has art directed Phoenix New Times, Cleveland Scene and New Times Broward-Palm Beach, and he has won multiple awards from Print, the Arizona Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Florida Press Association. EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Harvey A. Silverglate has been a contributing writer to The Boston Phoenix for most of his 38-year career as a criminal defense and civil liberties litigator. One of the first lawyers to double as a newspaper commentator, he has used his experience in the law generally, and his personal involvement in some of the major criminal and civil liberties controversies of his era, to shed light — in prose that is legally accurate but fully understandable to laymen — on why citizens should be interested and involved in what is done to the often-unpopular among us. He is a past president and current board member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, founder of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, cofounder of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and coauthor, with Alan Charles Kors, of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses (HarperPerennial, 1999). COLUMN-POLITICAL

Matt Smith has been a staff writer and columnist at SF Weekly since 1997. Previously he was a staff correspondent in Dow Jones Newswire’s Mexico City bureau and a staff writer at papers in Newport News, Va.; Twin Falls, Idaho; Fairfield, Calif.; and Sacramento, Calif. He has a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before becoming a journalist, Smith started and managed a clothing manufacturing and export business in Mexico City. He was an amateur bicycle racer, living at the United States Olympic Training Center, before turning professional in 1985 with Gruppo Sportivo Mengoni. COLUMN-POLITICAL

Jen Sorensen is the cartoonist behind “Slowpoke,” a weekly strip that appears in alternative weeklies around the country, and in such national publications as Ms. Magazine, Funny Times and Z Magazine. The cartoon can also be seen on Workingforchange.com, CampusProgress.org, and Cagle’s Cartoon Index on Slate.com. “Slowpoke” made its debut as a weekly strip in 1998 and has since won two awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, in 2003 and 2004. The strip is also featured in Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists, an anthology edited by Ted Rall, and in The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition. Her new book, Slowpoke: America Gone Bonkers, was released in late 2004. Sorensen’s Web site is http://www.slowpokecomics.com. CARTOON

Lisa Sorg is the editor of the San Antonio Current. Previously she was the editor at the Bloomington Independent and worked for two Indiana dailies and community radio station WFHB. She has won more than a dozen writing and reporting awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Christopher Street is art director at Oklahoma Gazette. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1996 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in visual communications. He had five years of pre-press and advertising agency experience prior to joining the Gazette. COVER DESIGN

Jennifer Strom is a staff writer at The Independent Weekly, where she focuses on political and investigative reporting. A 1989 graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism school and winner of a first-place AltWeekly Award for investigative reporting in 2004, Strom joined the Indy staff in 2001 after writing and editing for daily newspapers in Maryland and North Carolina. NEWS STORY-LONG FORM

Ward Sutton creates the weekly cartoon “Sutton Impact” for the Village Voice. The strip, which he began in 1995, is self-syndicated to numerous papers. In 2004, Sutton covered the Republican and Democratic conventions as a cartoon reporter for the Voice. The first book collection of Sutton’s political cartoons is being published by Seven Stories Press. CARTOON

Ayana Taylor is a contributing editor to the Jackson Free Press. She started working there as an unpaid intern the summer after her junior year of college and later continued as the recipient of an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies winter/spring 2004 Diversity Internship grant. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis in journalism from Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss., in May 2004. She then spent her summer as a 2004 fellow of the Academy for Alternative Journalism in Chicago. NEWS STORY-SHORT FORM

Carl Takei is a 2002 graduate of Brown University, where he wrote for The Brown Daily Herald. He was a research assistant and paralegal for The Boston Phoenix columnist Harvey A. Silverglate. COLUMN-POLITICAL

Matthew Thorsen has been a freelance photographer for Seven Days since the Burlington, Vt., newspaper’s inception. His restaurant spotlight photos are featured throughout both editions of “7 Nights.” His work can be viewed at http://www.matthewthorsen.com. SPECIAL SECTION

Kat Vellos is editorial art director at Folio Weekly in Jacksonville, Fla. When not busy building bodacious layouts and covers and herding sales reps out of the art department, Vellos, a native of Belize (and recently naturalized U.S. citizen), rolls out promotional art for underground performers including D.C. performance artist Holly Bass and alt-culture/concert venue Loose Screws. Vellos is also a literacy tutor and outspoken social activist who founded “Poetspeak,” a twice-monthly spoken-word event in St. Augustine. EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Teun Voeten has covered the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan and Iraq as an author and war photographer for magazines such as Vanity Fair, National Geographic and The New Yorker. Voeten lives in Brussels and New York. PHOTOGRAPHY

Robb Walsh is the food writer at the Houston Press. Two-time James Beard Award winner Walsh is the author of Are You Really Going to Eat That?, The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Legends of Texas Barbecue, and other books about food and cooking. His name also appears on the Wall of Fame at the Acme Oyster Bar, where he once ate 15 dozen oysters in a single sitting. FOOD WRITING

Ryan Ward is the design and art director of L.A. Weekly. He has a master of fine arts in printmaking and 2-D design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. As an undergraduate at Michigan State University, he was the art/design director at The State News, the daily student newspaper. Originally from Flint, Mich., he has lived in Los Angeles for two years. EDITORIAL LAYOUT

Andrew Wheat is research director of the Austin-based Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), a wildcatter nonprofit organization that tracks political cash in “the Wild West of money in politics.” National media often feature TPJ research. Some of the organization’s findings triggered a pending criminal probe of Tom DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee. Wheat’s columns in The Texas Observer are so influential that Texas politicos go out of their way to oppose any opinion voiced therein. COLUMN-POLITICAL

Adam Wilcox is freelance writer for City Newspaper in Rochester, N.Y. He is a home-schooling father of three who writes poetry early in the morning and plays rock ‘n’ roll deep into the night. He is also a product manager for a line of computer software training manuals and has been writing about food, families, music, and sports for City Newspaper for 6 years. FOOD WRITING

Kent Williams has been on the editorial staff of Isthmus in Madison, Wis., since 1989. He now writes a movie column, an advice column and longer articles on the arts and other subjects. ARTS CRITICISM

Elaine Wolff is the arts editor for the San Antonio Current. Prior to joining the Current, she was a founding member and managing editor of Perla Magazine. She is the cofounder and former producer of the award-winning Radical Mother’s Voice on KOOP Radio in Austin, Texas, where she also produced regular editions of the KOOP Evening News and the audio magazine Notes from a Broad. MEDIA REPORTING/CRITICISM

Mario Zucca is a 2003 graduate from the Tyler School of Art with a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design/illustration. Some of his clients include The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The American Medical News, ESPN Magazine and C-Ville Weekly, in which his award-winning illustration appeared. Mario works primarily in scratchboard and adds color digitally. Mario’s favorite subjects are people, crowded city scenes and bald men who bear a striking resemblance to himself. ILLUSTRATION

Jason Zwiker is a freelance photographer and writer based in Charleston, S.C. His photography for this award appeared in the Charleston City Paper. COVER DESIGN