Brink won several AAN awards over the years, including first-place awards for Corrections Reporting (2000) and Short-Form News Story (2005).
Craig Malisow of the Houston Press and Jeff Prince of Fort Worth Weekly were honored as Journalist of the Year in their respective divisions.
One of the secret weapons in Betty Brink's reporting arsenal is the way she looks. Because she cuts a grandmotherly figure, people can't help but confide in her. The reporter who started out at an underground paper in college now does award-winning news reporting for Fort Worth Weekly. This is the 17th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Betty Brink claims the AAN-member paper hired Pulitzer-winning former Dallas Morning News reporter Dan Malone at a salary exceeding her own by over 50%. The Dallas Observer reports that Brink -- at 70 perhaps the oldest working journalist in the alternative newspaper business -- has filed a complaint with the EEOC, alleging age and gender discrimination.