Last year, for the first time, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conducted its editorial contest online. Although there were some frustrating glitches, entrants overwhelmingly favored the online method of entering the AltWeekly Awards. This year, AAN used feedback from member papers and judges to make improvements, including more specific instructions to make uploading PDFs easier. The 2006 AltWeekly Awards Web site will be launched on Dec. 5.
When Lisa Sorg found out a Federal Communications Commission panel had scheduled a hearing in San Antonio, she wanted her community to be well prepared to talk about how media ownership affects what news they hear -- and don't hear. So the editor of the San Antonio Current and her small staff tackled the issue of conglomerates taking over the airwaves, turning out a two-part, multi-story series that won an AltWeekly Award for Media Reporting/Criticism. This is the 12th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Jen Sorensen's comic strip, Slowpoke, has moved a bit away from social commentary in the past few years to be more political. Her ideas come from, among other places, progressive blogs. She describes here how she draws her cartoon, what inspires her and the creative process. This is the eighth in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
AAN has made available the complete list of submitted biographies for winners and runners-up.
The winners of the 2005 AltWeekly Awards unveil the process they went through to create their first-place articles, photography, cartoons and design. The series sheds light on the work found in the book "Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005."
People who don't know Jennifer Loviglio's work sometimes say, "Oh, you write a 'mommy column.'" Far from it. Even when Loviglio is writing about her kids, her City Newspaper column, The XX Files, makes important political and cultural points. In between columns, she's always looking for an issue that will raise her hackles. This is the third in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
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.
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.
Judges' critiques of the 2005 AltWeekly Awards winners can now be downloaded for review. The same comments will appear in AAN Press's forthcoming book, Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005. Individual newspapers can also obtain summaries of remarks on all of their entries.
