San Francisco Bay Guardian picked up the coveted General Excellence award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Palo Alto Weekly led all alt-weeklies with ten awards.
The Society of Professional Journalists' Pacific Northwest Excellence in Journalism competition, unlike many others, features its own alt-weekly division, which pits publications from Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and Montana against each other. This year, the Pacific Northwest Inlander led the pack with 13 total awards -- six of which were first-place finishes. Five of the Willamette Week's nine total awards were in first place, and Seattle Weekly won 13 total awards and three firsts. The Missoula Independent won five awards, with two first-place wins. The Eugene Weekly won five awards and the Portland Mercury won one.
The California Newspaper Publishers Association recently gave out 480 first and second place awards in its 2009 Better Newspapers contest, and nine alt-weeklies received at least one. The Sacramento News & Review won ten awards, including firsts for Public Service, Columns, Sports Story, Front Page, Freedom of Information. SF Weekly won seven awards, including first-place finishes for Writing, Investigative/Enterprise Reporting and Environmental/Ag Resource Reporting. The North Coast Journal won six awards, including firsts in the Writing, Local News Coverage, Business/Financial Story and Environmental/Ag Resource Reporting categories. Palo Alto Weekly took home five awards -- all first-place wins -- in the Editorial Comment, Local News Coverage, Sports Coverage, Feature Photo, Best Website and General Excellence categories. Chico News & Review won two awards, both firsts, for Editorial Pages and Special Issue. Pacific Sun also took home two awards, both firsts, for Feature Story and Lifestyle Coverage. Metro Silicon Valley, Pasadena Weekly and the San Francisco Bay Guardian each took home one award.
The Spokane, Wash., alt-weekly has re-launched its website, Inlander.com. The redesign features faster load times, online archives stretching back 10 years, a regularly updated, all-in-one blog (a la The Stranger's Slog) and, crucially, a searchable, sortable, shareable entertainment listing system. The redesign was made possible through months of work with Wisconsin-based WeHaa, a web-publishing company that is also currently working with the Santa Fe Reporter, Ohio's Athens News and Birmingham Weekly. "My major goal was to really give The Inlander the dream site ... [to] give them the best tools to grab the online market," says Cesar Montes, president of WeHaa. "We keep growing and growing and growing, because we are [always] open to hearing the needs of the publisher."
Five alt-weeklies won a number of awards in the Oregon and Southwest Washington chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists' 2008 Excellence in Journalism Awards. Among non-daily newspapers in Oregon, Willamette Week took home 10 first-place awards, while Eugene Weekly took home one. Among alt-weeklies in the Northwest region, WW won six first-place awards; Seattle Weekly won four; the Missoula Independent won two; and the Pacific Northwest Inlander won one.
In the old days, when the media reported on problems in the newspaper industry, alternative newspapers weren't included. But alt-weeklies are immune no longer: In 2008, many AAN papers faced some of the same issues afflicting their mainstream brethren in the print media. However, you can still find alt-weeklies that had a pretty good year in 2008. That's just what AAN's editor Jon Whiten did, and he reports on 10 papers that increased revenue in a story published by Editor & Publisher.
The California Newspaper Publishers Association announced the winners of its annual Better Newspapers Contest on Saturday, and nine AAN members won a total of 38 awards. The Sacramento News & Review won a total of nine awards, five of which were first-place finishes, including a General Excellence win. "The News & Review is a salty and irreverent weekly packed with excellent coverage of news and culture, multiple voices in columns and two pages of letters," the judges wrote. "Its colorful design is inviting and, praises to the sales department, it is packed with ads." In addition, Palo Alto Weekly also won nine total awards; the North Coast Journal won eight; Chico News & Review won four; the San Francisco Bay Guardian won three; Metro Silicon Valley won two; and the Pacific Sun, Pasadena Weekly and SF Weekly each took home one award. CORRECTION: The Santa Barbara Independent also won five awards.
Jacob Shafer has replaced Anthony Pignataro as the paper's editor, according to a press release. Shafer comes to Maui from Northern California, where he served as calendar editor and later staff writer for The Pacific Sun. "Jacob has a firm grasp of important environmental issues that are so critical to our delicate and precious market, an isolated island in the middle of the Pacific. He contributes a maturity level way beyond his years to this gift that we offer our community," says Maui Time publisher Tommy Russo.
The winners of the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists' Pacific Northwest Excellence in Journalism Awards were announced on Saturday night, and dozens of awards went to four alt-weeklies. Seattle Weekly led the way with 15 awards, including a total of eight first-place finishes in the Business, Education, Government, Investigative, Lifestyle, Science and Health, Special Section, and Sports categories. The Pacific Northwest Inlander took home 12 awards, including four first-place wins in the Consumer/Environmental Affairs, Humor, Page Design, and Social Issues categories. Eugene Weekly also won seven awards, and the Missoula Independent took home four.
