To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision abolishing segregation in public schools, Gambit Weekly asked New Orleans high school students to write about the ruling's impact on them. Segregation takes many forms, the students observe. Ninth grader Vinnessia Shelbia contends that the school system, by focusing on black "high achievers," belittles African American students' futures. The result: too many "end up cleaning up after the ones who went to good schools."
In a fitting tribute, the paper dedicates the Best of New Orleans issue to its former ad director, who succumbed to cancer earlier this week. “Sue represented the best of Gambit,” says publisher Margo DuBos. “In a lifetime, you can only hope to know someone as wonderful as Sue.” News & Reviews’ Jeff von Kaenel, who worked with Crichton to organize AWN, says, “Putting it together was complicated because getting alternative newspaper publishers to work together is like herding cats. And Sue was one of the few people I met who could herd cats.”
Eric Benjamin, a 20-year alternative newsweekly veteran, becomes associate publisher of Gambit Weekly. The Boston native played a significant role in the growth of the alternative newsweekly industry as board president and founding board member of Alternative Weekly Network, which represents more than 120 alternative newsweeklies nationwide. He comes to Gambit directly from New Mass Media, where he was national sales director.
Cartoonist Ted Rall, whose work appears in several AAN papers, and Katy Reckdahl, a frequent contributor to Gambit Weekly, are among the five winners of the 2002 James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism. The judges say that Rall's "Cartooning with a Conscience" has "increasingly grown irreverent, cutting and iconoclastic, almost at times seeming to eschew humor in favor of mordant portraiture." Reckdahl was recognized for her work on the homeless of New Orleans. "Reckdahl's work challenges the stereotype that the homeless create their own situation because they are criminals, substance abusers or mentally ill," the judges wrote.
Katy Reckdahl wins a 2002 Casey Journalism Center Medal for Distinguished Coverage of Children and Family Issues. Her award in the non-daily newspaper category is for her "full and compelling report on the troubled Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth" that appeared last year in Gambit Weekly, the center's release states. The series won a first-place in the news feature category of the Alternative Newsweekly Awards.
