The application deadline for newspapers to apply for AAN membership is Dec. 31, 2008. You can download an application here, or contact AAN to have one mailed to you. After a rigorous vetting process, the Membership Committee will issue its recommendations prior to June's convention in Tucson, where all members will have the chance to vote on the applicants. You can find links to the Membership Committee's admission guidelines and the AAN bylaws on the Membership page of our site. If you have any additional questions about membership, please call 202-289-8484 or email Debra Silvestrin at debra (at) aan.org.
In the nineteenth -- and final -- installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Gus Garcia-Roberts talks to Phillip Bailey about his award-winning short news stories for Cleveland's Scene. Garcia-Roberts, an Academy for Alternative Journalism alum who was transferred to Miami New Times after the Scene's merger with Cleveland Free Times in June, covers meth addicts, rural farmers, nightclub owners, and cultural phenomena with equal aplomb in his entries. He tells Bailey how each story came about, reveals his reporting process, and offers advice to other young alt-weekly journalists. "Think small," Garcia-Roberts says. "Find weird people in your area that have no idea why you're writing about them, and do their strangeness justice."
The 2009 AltWeekly Awards is now accepting entries. The contest website opened Mon., Dec. 1, 2008 and will close on the contest deadline, Fri., Jan. 30, 2009 at midnight (EST). This year’s Wild Card category is Election Coverage. The winners will be announced at the 32nd Annual AAN Convention taking place June 25-27, 2009 in Tucson, Ariz.
In the eighteenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Jake Bernstein talks about his story for The Texas Observer that revealed the state's governor had amassed a huge database of information on Texas' citizens without them knowing it. The story came to Bernstein, who is now a reporter at ProPublica, via a tip, and sparked immediate reactions. "It was one of the most instantaneous responses I've ever had to a story," Bernstein says. "Literally, within hours of us posting it on our website, people were talking about it on the Texas House floor." He explains to Angelica Herrera how he pieced together the story, his opinion on anonymous sources, and the ultimate impact of his story.
In the seventeenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Westword staff writer Alan Prendergast talks to Angelica Herrera about his stories on local district attorney Carol Chambers. The two articles, which earned the veteran alt-weekly writer a first place finish in News Story -- Long Form, specifically examine Chambers' controversial use of Colorado's "habitual offender" statutes, which give prosecutors leeway to seek longer sentences for repeat offenders regardless of the nature of the crimes. In this Q&A, Prendergast discusses the roots of the story, how Chambers reacted, and why alt-weekly writers shouldn't shy away from covering the same ground as the daily. "Sometimes the temptation with weeklies is to shy away from stories that the dailies are already doing," he says. "But, often those stories in the dailies are poorly covered, or there are just a lot of questions left unanswered."
In the sixteenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, San Antonio Current music editor Gilbert Garcia talks about his winning columns, which Ling Ma says are all "portraits of mediocrity." She's talking not about Garcia's writing, of course, but about the subjects he covers: The Police, Paul McCartney, and American Idol Haley Scarnato. Garcia discusses his band, the role a music critic should play, and the difficulty of writing about something you know very well. "When you know too much about a subject, you almost have too many approaches you could take," he says.
In the fifteenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Village Voice music editor Rob Harvilla talks to Ling Ma about his winning columns, which included a memorable Venn diagram-based breakdown of a breakout hip-hop hit. While Harvilla doesn't take himself too seriously (he says his career choice is "pretty frivolous"), you can tell he is serious about music by reading his work. In this Q&A, he discusses the rock critic's lexicon, how blogs and the web have impacted music criticism, and the distinct absence of rock-critic groupies. "It's a great job and I love it, but I don't think women are generally attracted to rock critics on the basis of them being rock critics," Harvilla says. "It's usually in spite of that fact."
The readers of more than 70 alternative newspapers are being urged to spend at least $100 of their holiday money this fall at locally owned stores in their communities -- a move that could pump more than $2.9 billion into urban economies during this recession-plagued season. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, the American Independent Business Alliance, and East Bay Express publisher Jody Colley helped develop the unprecedented project, and AAN helped line up 73 North American papers to participate. "If every one of the 17.5 million readers of these weeklies were to spend just $100 with local, independently owned merchants, the impact would be enormous," Colley says.
In the fourteenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, the Santa Barbara Independent's Nick Welsh discusses his award-winning media coverage of the local daily. In the midst of reporting on turmoil at the Santa Barbara News-Press, Welsh eventually became part of the story himself, as he was sued by the paper for copyright infringement. He tells Tess Martinez how he became the go-to guy for News-Press news, the chilling effect of being sued by another paper, and how the Independent has stepped in as the News-Press has essentially committed suicide. "Santa Barbara is a community trying to figure out how to live without a daily paper," Welsh says. "At the Independent, we're trying to figure out a way to become a de facto daily with the internet. We're doing OK, but we're still struggling."
In the thirteenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Nate Blakeslee talks about how he uncovered sexual abuse in Texas' youth prisons for the Texas Observer. The investigation ignited a firestorm that led to the arrests of two employees and the firing of top officials. Blakeslee says the key to his story was a document he was tipped off to and then was able to procure. "Reporters don't often run into documents like this one. In fact, a person can go a whole career without a case like this," he says. "This story was just waiting out there to be found. I can say if you find something like this, get it into print as soon as you can."
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