Nat Hentoff (pictured) last week joined an august group that includes jazz greats like Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald, when he was awarded a Jazz Master Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. "No writer has been a greater friend to jazz than critic, historian, biographer and anecdotist Nat Hentoff," says the NEA. Hentoff's weekly column in the Voice, where he has written for over 30 years, has also made him one of the nation's most prominent defenders of civil liberties.

Continue ReadingVillage Voice Columnist and Critic Hentoff Honored

Newspapers in the Phoenix-based alt-weekly chain picked up seven of the 11 awards handed out last month in the under 150,000 circulation category of the National Association of Black Journalists' annual contest. Dallas Observer's Jim Schutze and Julie Lyons, Cleveland Scene's Thomas Francis and Riverfront Times' Jeannette Batz all were named first-place winners.

Continue ReadingNew Times Dominates NABJ Awards

The Association for Women in Communications grants Martin Kuz of Cleveland Scene a Clarion Award for his story, "The Wal-Mart Menace" in the Newspaper Hard News Story category. Geri Dreiling of Riverfront Times also picks up a Clarion Award in the Newspaper Feature Story category for "Nasty Boys."

Continue ReadingNew Times Papers Win Two Clarion Awards

Dallas Observer won two first place awards in the 2003 Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards, and The Village Voice and Phoenix New Times each took one. East Bay Express won second place in the General Excellence category for papers with circulations 50,001 to 100,000, and New Times papers were finalists in nine other categories.

Continue ReadingAAN Papers Take Four Firsts in Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards

LA Weekly, Chicago Reader. Gambit Weekly, and Cincinnati CityBeat each took two firsts today in the eighth annual Alternative Newsweekly Awards. Among individual contestants, Thomas Francis of Cleveland Scene and Heather Swaim of OC Weekly led the field, each taking two awards, including one first-place prize.

Continue ReadingAlternative Newsweekly Award Winners Announced

Caryn Brooks, arts and culture editor at Willamette Week, has been named one of seven 2003-04 fellows of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. "In addition to pursuing coursework and other activities at Columbia, the fellows will participate jointly in a research project designed to inform news organizations, arts institutions and philanthropic organizations about important trends in the current U.S. artistic and journalistic environment," the program's release states.

Continue ReadingAAN Editor Named NAJP Fellow