Foodies at Creative Loafing (Atlanta), Riverfront Times, Westword, L.A. Weekly, East Bay Express, City Pages (Twin Cities), Phoenix New Times, and Houston Press picked up ten of the 21 nominations for which they qualified in the 2006 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards announced today. The complete list is available as a PDF here. Alt-weeklies were particularly dominant in the "Newspaper Writing on Spirits, Wine or Beer" category, in which all three nominees are AAN members. The awards recognize and honor excellence and achievement in the culinary arts.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weeklies Lap Up Nominations in Food-Writing Awards

The March 15 issue of the Burlington, Vt. weekly contains a letter to the editor from Donald Fell, who was sentenced to death for the 2000 kidnapping and murder of Terry King. In the letter, which can be read here (fourth item down), Fell writes, "I live every day in abject sorrow. Not for myself, but for these righteous people, these innocents whose lives I have destroyed." Fell's trial was the focus of media attention because he is the first person to receive the death penalty in Vermont in 50 years; a representative of The Campaign to End the Death Penalty forwarded the letter to Seven Days. Burlington TV station WPTZ interviewed his victim's daughter, who said, "He sums it up in two paragraphs. That's not remorse."

Continue ReadingDeath Row Inmate Apologizes in Letter to Seven Days

Yesterday morning, Cathy Resmer, a staff writer for Seven Days in Burlington, Vt., discovered text and images snatched directly from Seven Days' Web site had been posted on Explore New England's Vermont blog. (Explore New England is managed by the Boston Globe and its Web site, Boston.com, both of which are owned by the New York Times Co.) Resmer contacted the blogger's boss at Boston.com, who apologized, terminated his contract and promptly deleted the blog. "I think we should all be paying attention to who's writing about our circulation areas online," Resmer tells AAN News. "I think it's worth having somebody on staff who's monitoring local blogs. It's a great way to find out what readers are saying, and in this case, it helped us protect our material."

Continue ReadingBlogger Steals Content From Seven Days, Gets Fired

Earlier this week, the Village Voice confirmed the departure of Doug Simmons by posting a photo of a napkin on which Executive Editor Mike Lacey had scrawled, "Doug Simmons is no longer acting editor." But the story doesn't end there. The Stranger has posted on its blog a new photo of a pair of napkins, on which "Lacey" writes that he "recently discovered that many of the young ladies who advertise in the back pages of the Voice actually have PENISES. They appear to be ladies until it’s too late."

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Unearths Another ‘Lacey Napkin’