The editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press never intended to write the story that won her a 2005 AltWeekly Award for Feature Story. She'd assigned it to another writer. And then she ran into one of the subjects of the piece, they got to talking, and over the next six months she developed her heart-rending account of a family that suffered at the hands of a priest. This is the second in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
One of the youngest winners of a 2005 AltWeekly Award is Nick Goodenough, whose column for Ventura County Reporter, "Nick at Night," took first place for photography in the small-paper division. In an interview with AAN intern Lindsay Kishter, Goodenough explains how he managed to take photos on packed dance floors without blurring his subjects or losing his grip on his camera. This is the first in a series titled "How I Got That Story" that will highlight the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
The association has collected over $106,000 in charitable contributions since the effort to raise money for Gambit Weekly employees was announced on Sept. 2. A second payment of $1,000 was wired yesterday to each of those employees, who were evacuated from their homes and left without jobs or income after Hurricane Katrina struck. Most of the money raised has come from AAN-member papers and their employees, although contributions began to trickle in last week from readers as well.
A 33 percent increase in the monthly traffic count enabled AAN's collaborative news site to pass the quarter-million mark in unique visitors. AltWeeklies.com traffic has increased exponentially since April, when the number of unique visitors was less than 10,000. Most of that growth has come from AAN members who run AltWeeklies.com teasers, which have also increased traffic on their own sites.
This year AAN put out no ordinary awards book. Among the honored first-place entries is a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss. "Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005" offers a wide selection of riveting reading, produced by some seasoned writers and others just beginning to make their mark. The bookstore-quality volume is designed to reach a wider audience than ever.
Newly named AAN assistant editor Shala Carlson (pictured), who was serving as Gambit Weekly's managing editor prior to Hurricane Katrina, has decided to return to Louisiana. "I think I just acted too quickly," Carlson says. "I believed I was ready to make a move, but I didn't anticipate how much I need friends and family and familiarity right now." AAN posted a help-wanted ad today for the newly reopened position.
Michael Tisserand (pictured at left, with family) this week launched a series of weekly columns available to all AAN-member papers that will focus on the evacuee experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "Although the voice of these pieces will be personal," says Tisserand, "this is going to be a heavily reported column seeking to give specific voice to the general evacuee population." The 2,000-word columns will be available free of charge each Monday to member papers for use in their pages or on their Web sites.
Forty-nine employees of the besieged New Orleans paper will each receive an initial gift of $1,000 this week from AAN's Gambit Relief Fund. Although the Fund has already collected over $52,000 in contributions, AAN will continue to seek additional financial assistance for Gambit staffers, with the goal of raising enough money to help them through the next two or three months. New Times and Village Voice employees, whose parent companies have both aggressively promoted a matching-funds program, make up a large percentage of the individual contributions received in the first week since the fund was announced.
Shala Carlson will take over as the association's assistant editor next week, replacing Ryan Learmouth, whose last day at AAN is this Friday. Carlson has worked for the New Orleans alt-weekly since 1998, and before that served stints as an editor at the Times of Acadiana in Lafayette, La., and an administrator for a Louisiana-based nonprofit organization. She has been living with her parents in Opelousas, La., since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last weekend.
