To create his award-winning editorial layout, "Coffin Classics," Miami New Times art director Michael Shavalier mixed studio shots of older Goths with shots of modern, drinking, club-going Goths. When designing in black and white, arresting images and good typography are key, he says. This is the 28th in a "How I Got That Story" series highlighting the AltWeekly Awards' first-place winners.
Celeste Fraser Delgado was arrested on Nov. 20, 2003 while covering protests during the Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial meetings in downtown Miami. On Thursday--the two-year anniversary of the event--the ACLU filed three lawsuits, including one on Delgado's behalf, charging that police officers had used excessive force to intimidate and unlawfully arrest innocent bystanders and protesters. Delgado, who wrote a 2700-word article about her experience, is no longer with Miami New Times.
The National Association of Black Journalists announced the winners of its Salute to Excellence Awards competition this weekend in Washington, D.C. The organization handed out six first-place prizes for newspapers with circulations of 150,000 or less, and every last one of them were awarded to New Times papers. Here's the complete list of NABJ award winners.
In his final column as editor of Miami New Times, Jim Mullin (pictured) touches on the "dramatic, dizzying change" that has taken place in the city since the paper debuted over eighteen years ago. Mullin says a paper like his, "with a small staff, closely reflects the personalities who produce it" and gives a shout out to all those who played a role in helping him chronicle the flux in this city that is "long on illusion and short on memory" and where "change is the only constant."
After 18 years at the alt-weekly, Jim Mullin (pictured) will step down from his position. The announcement comes less than a month after former city official Arthur Teele's suicide, which came on the heels of a New Times cover story about Teele's involvement with a transvestite prostitute. Mullin says that while he was "profoundly affected" by the tragedy, he'd been considering leaving the paper for the past year. His successor will be Chuck Strouse, the current editor of New Times Broward-Palm Beach.
The Society of Professional Journalists announced the 2004 Green Eyeshade Award finalists yesterday, and AAN papers received 17 of the 27 nominations in the weekly/monthly division. According to SPJ, the Green Eyeshades "have honored the best in professional journalism in 11 southeastern states for 55 years." New Times Broward-Palm Beach and its sister paper, Miami New Times, did particularly well, receiving eight and five nominations, respectively. (NTBPB swept the nominations in the sports reporting category.) Independent Weekly's FEMA story, which ran in over 20 AAN papers this fall as part of an editorial joint project, was nominated in the investigative reporting category. Here's SPJ's announcement.
"High hopes and disappointing realities are the bookends of Street's brief biography," writes Tristram Korten of Knight Ridder's defunct faux-alt. "Street was the [Miami] Herald's research-and-development experiment in attracting the elusive 18 to 34-year-old reader. For more than a decade daily newspapers nationwide have been grappling with declining circulation figures, especially among younger readers. But after five years Street failed to convince clients their advertisements were being seen by enough people, young or old."
Miami New Times reports that the Miami Herald has closed Street Weekly, which began its run in 1999. According to the report, the free tabloid "was meant to engage young readers and compete directly with Miami New Times."
Readers of Gambit Weekly, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Miami New Times, Weekly Planet (Tampa), Weekly Planet (Sarasota), Folio Weekly and Orlando Weekly have lately seen Mother Nature at her worst. Distributed in areas affected by the hurricanes that have pounded Florida and surrounding states since August, these alt-weeklies have come out on schedule -- thanks to determined staffers and contingency plans.
