Ruth Hammond will be stepping down as AAN's editorial director on Dec. 23 to take a job as a senior copy editor with The Chronicle of Higher Education. During her two years at AAN, Ruth participated in the launch of AltWeeklies.com and kept the site running; she also administered the AltWeekly Awards contest, including the contest's move to an online format last year. In reflecting on her work at AAN, Ruth says, "what strikes me most is how much teamwork went into all my projects."
Derf (aka John Backderf) gets ideas for his cartoon through cultural osmosis. As he wanders around the city, he stumbles across all kinds of material. His award-winning cartoon, The City, is carried by alternative weeklies across the country. This is the 25th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
With his award-winning arts criticism in Madison's Isthmus, Kent Williams makes the case for the local critic: someone who will see The Passion of the Christ the way the community sees it, who will marvel at the complexity of the pipe organ in the local symphony hall, and who will notice the naked sculpture at the local museum that people have walked past all these years without ever really understanding her. This is the 24th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
You never know where a search engine will lead you. For Terje Langeland, a reporter for the Colorado Springs Independent, it was straight into a web of connections among local people who had backed pro-voucher candidates for the school board and national pro-voucher groups. His award-winning series, "Command Performance," lays out the details. This is the 23rd in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
The online registration system first implemented for the 2005 AltWeekly Awards contest is back -- with some improvements. A new category! An earlier deadline! Different ways to submit! Learn more about the changes here.
Writing film criticism for an alt-weekly in an area with a highly educated population allows Godfrey Cheshire to write without dumbing down his work. His three award-winning reviews for The Independent Weekly analyze films created by an American, a Russian and an Iranian. This is the 22nd in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Marc Desilets, the senior classified sales representative at Tucson Weekly, collected his AAN CAN prize and traveled to New York City over the Thanksgiving holiday. Desilets won the three-night trip for two by selling $43,095 in national ads during the summer 2005 AAN CAN contest.
When he covered media for the Dallas Observer, Eric Celeste wanted to do more than deliver "bee stings" to the local daily. He wanted to delve into the paper's inner workings. His award-winning article, "At the Ripping Point," examined a newspaper consulting company's role in the decline of The Dallas Morning News. This is the 21st in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
For the first time since October 2003, AAN has sold an ad through the AAN ADvantage program. NARAL Pro-Choice America purchased the full-page, black-and-white ad, which will run in member papers in early 2006. Donated ads are included in AAN's annual budget but are not always sold. The NARAL ad was sold by AAN staff, so the association will net the entire $75,000 rate.
