AAN papers pushed against ambivalence about both the Iraq war and how to cover it in recent months, producing the localized, alternative voice on the war that is the industry's hallmark. Yet, many editors tell AAN News' John Dicker that even making the obligatory anti-war protest pieces interesting was a battle. "The challenge for our papers is what a long bridge we have to build to write with any intelligence about Islamic communities, Iraqi refugees and the like without sounding like really distant observers," Willamette Week Editor Mark Zusman says.

Lisa M. Collins (Metro Times), Mara Shalhoup (Creative Loafing Atlanta), and Jason Sheehan (Westword) are among the 60 finalists for Livingston Awards this year. The Livingston Awards, the nation's largest all-media, general reporting prizes, award three $10,000 prizes for Local, National, and International Reporting to journalists under the age of 35. The winners will be announced June 17, 2003.

The Washington Post examines the revival of "retro chic" Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Buried about halfway through the story is the line, "Print ads are relegated to the bargain bin of weekly alternative papers." Who's chugging Pabst (and presumably reading alt-weeklies)? Snowboarders, indie filmmakers, "suited-up young Republicans, faux cowboys and dead-serious blue-collar drinkers," Bret Schulte writes. Of course, AAN papers are so hip they were writing about this phenomenon months ago.

"'We told you so' is hardly an endearing newspaper motto, let alone the breakfast of champions, but sometimes it's all we little guys have," says Seattle Weekly Editor Knute Berger, explaining why he felt it was necessary to toot his papers' horn for its coverage of mismanagement at the local PBS affiliate. Berger says that when the president of the station was forced to resign last week, the Seattle Times implied that its impending investigation was the reason.