The two papers swept the Newspaper Feature Story category in this year's contest, which is administered by the Association for Women in Communications. The Loaf's Mara Shalhoup won in the circulation above 100,000 category, for Learning to Hit a Lick, which also won the Feature Story category in this year's AltWeekly Awards. And the Express' Kara Platoni won in the under 100,000 category, for The Ten Million Dollar Woman. The awards were presented this weekend in Lubbock, Texas.

Continue ReadingCreative Loafing and East Bay Express Pick Up Clarion Awards

We don't know enough about art or classified advertising to answer that question definitively, but the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's upcoming "I Saw You" exhibition certainly qualifies as rare and unusual. The exhibition, which opens Nov. 4, features work by SAIC students "inspired by the Chicago Reader's I Saw You classifieds," according to the school's Web site.

Continue ReadingThe First Art Exhibit Inspired by Classified Advertising?

The short history of alternative newspapers began fifty years ago today, when Norman Mailer, Dan Wolf and Ed Fancher published the first issue of the Village Voice. To celebrate its golden anniversary, the world's best-known alt-weekly published a special issue that provides a taste of "the notorious fractiousness, the intensely personal journalism, and all the other quirks that make the Voice the Voice." Among other things, the issue includes a mix of original essays, including Nat Hentoff on the history and spirit of the Voice, Jarrett Murphy on the history of Voice ownership, and Robert Christgau on how the Voice invented rock criticism.

Continue ReadingThe Voice Turns 50