Each year, Gambit throws a party to announce the winners of its Big Easy Awards, which honor the best in New Orleans theater and music. This year's attendees included New Orleans actors Harry Shearer (The Simpsons), Bryan Batt (Mad Men) and John Goodman (Treme), along with local musicians including Dr. John, Kermit Ruffins, Phil Anselmo (Pantera, Down), Irma Thomas, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and the Imagination Movers.
Pulitzer-nominee Chris Rose, who took a buyout from the New Orleans daily last fall, has begun writing a column -- "Rose-Colored Glasses" -- for the Gambit. In his first piece, Rose talks about leaving the Times-Picayune after 25 years, and his new life as a freelancer. "Over the past year or two, I have cast about for alternative ideas to the Big City Daily," he writes. "I'm a newspaperman through and through, a wretched, ink-stained malcontent for whom information is currency and life is spent on one harrowing deadline after another, and I consider the job done well only if you have ruined somebody else's day."
LimeWire has revealed its latest free "Ear to the Ground" sampler, which features 19 tracks from New Orleans artists. The album is curated by the staff of the Gambit, and it follows similar comps curated by alt-weekly staffs in Athens, Boston, Detroit, Nashville, Philadelphia and Portland.
In a report on the newspaper industry's well-publicized woes, the New Orleans alt-weekly points out that "2009 has been a relatively good year for Gambit and many other locally owned, locally focused newspapers." The paper reports it avoided layoffs by decreasing its newsprint size and taking other cost-cutting measures and says it should fare well as the issues in the industry continue to shake out: "In the long run, the newspapers that survive will be those that have a special bond with their readers -- and we count ourselves among them."
Al Shea, a longtime New Orleans actor, TV personality and critic for Gambit and other outlets, died early this morning after a long battle with bladder cancer. He was 80. Shea was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gambit's Big Easy Awards earlier this year for his contributions to New Orleans.
Lafayette's The Independent Weekly won 29 awards and New Orleans' Gambit Weekly won 10 in the Louisiana Press Association's annual contest. The Independent snagged first place for Editorial Cartoon, Feature Story, Lifestyle Coverage, Multimedia Element, Web Project and six advertising awards. Gambit won firsts for Regular Column and online advertising. The two papers tied for first place in Community Service/Service to Readers.
"The cutback in cartoons has less to do with the budget than it does with page counts going down," Kevin Allman tells "Idiot Box" cartoonist Matt Bors. "What you see as $25 for a cartoon, the publishers see as potential ad space that could sell for 10x that amount." Allman says that in New Orleans, they ended up sticking with local cartoonists rather than nationally syndicated ones. "Their drawings are the equivalent of local news stories," he says. "And I try to treat them with as much respect as I do the columnists, but they have to suffer too with the smaller page layouts."
Gambit publisher Margo DuBos and her husband, political editor Clancy DuBos, will be honored with the Anti-Defamation League's A.I. Botnick "Torch of Liberty Award" at a Dec. 14 dinner in New Orleans. "Under the direction of Margo and Clancy, Gambit has won scores of local, regional and national awards for innovative, incisive and robust journalism," the letter from the ADL reads. "The weekly's editorial positions reflect the ADL's commitment to equal opportunity and opposition to bigotry in any form."
Kevin Allman will take over as Gambit editor next week, replacing Clancy DuBos, who will remain on staff as political editor. DuBos co-owns the paper with his wife, publisher and CEO Margo DuBos, and is chairman of Gambit Communications Inc. "There are journalists in this country that would kill to be able to enterprise their own stories, work their own beats, and get the space they need to do their craft. They can do that at Gambit," Allman writes on his blog. "Now I get to join them, and I can't tell you how happy I am about that."
Ian McNulty's A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina "certainly ranks as one of the better Katrina memoirs," according to John Sledge, a columnist for the Alabama daily Press-Register. "McNulty's approach is defiantly, if quietly, personal," notes Gambit Weekly's Caroline Goyette. "It's this tight focus, combined with the author's fine eye for detail and his honest, introspective narration, that gives the book its considerable power."
