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.

Continue ReadingCall for Entries: 2009 AltWeekly Awards

In the third installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, Malcolm Gay, a regular freelancer for Riverfront Times, talks to Corina Knoll about his feature profile of author Qiu Xiaolong. Gay, who was formerly a Village Voice Media fellow at the East Bay Express and staff writer at the RFT, says he learned how challenging it is to write about a writer. "What they do physically and in terms of their day-to-day existence is very uneventful. So it's hard to bring drama and animation to those scenes," he says. "That's the challenge: to access that inner world and make it evident in the story."

Continue ReadingHow I Got That Story: Malcolm Gay

Don Eggert is an art director who loves deadlines: he thrives on the challenge of working against time constraints and enjoys the sense of relief that a job is done. He spent two hours, start to finish, creating his award-winning layout, "The Blogger." This is the 35th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.

Continue ReadingDon Eggert: Making Stories Into Something More

The 2006 AltWeekly Awards received 1554 entries from 99 member newspapers. Improvements made to the contest rules and Web site were successful in making the process less problematic. If the AAN staff is not buried alive by the onslaught of paper and FedEx boxes, we will next begin sorting entries and distributing them to the preliminary round judges.

Continue ReadingAltWeekly Awards Set Entry Record — Again!

By now, all newspapers planning to enter the 2005 AltWeekly Awards should have logged in to the contest site and reviewed the steps necessary to upload entries. Each entry must be registered online, regardless of whether the material itself is being entered in PDF or tearsheet format. As the midnight EST deadline approaches on Friday, the Web site may become slower, so don't wait until the last minute! Hard copies and payment must be received in the AAN office by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 24.

Continue ReadingAltWeekly Awards Deadline Is This Friday

Putting out a summer guide is not every alt-weekly staff writer's idea of a good time. To produce the Pacific Northwest Inlander's award-winning special section, editor and publisher Ted S. McGregor Jr. gathered his staff in a room and wouldn't let them out until they came up with some ideas that would make the guide not only fun to create but fun to read. This is the 29th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.

Continue ReadingTed McGregor: Pitching a Special Section

To create his award-winning editorial layout, "Coffin Classics," Miami New Times art director Michael Shavalier mixed studio shots of older Goths with shots of modern, drinking, club-going Goths. When designing in black and white, arresting images and good typography are key, he says. This is the 28th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.

Continue ReadingMichael Shavalier: Setting the Visual Stage

This year the Austin Chronicle gift guide features an item close to our hearts: Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005. Reviewer Nora Ankrum writes, "This is the gift for the writer or journalist on your shopping list, to be kept on the reference shelf next to the OED and the Chicago Manual and the most recent Best American Magazine Writing, but you won't find it at a bookstore, so order it online, soon." And no, the Austin Chronicle does not have a winning entry included in the book, although it has received AltWeekly Award recognition in earlier years.

Continue ReadingChronicle Gift Guide Recommends AAN’s AltWeekly Contest Book