Phoenix New Times' Sarah Fenske, who won first place for column writing in this year's AltWeekly Awards, was interviewed by the Santa Fe Reporter's Zane Fischer (who won the column-writing award in 2008) in a live chat today.
At 3 pm EST, this Friday, Nov. 27, AAN will continue its live chat series with 2009 AltWeekly Award winners when Phoenix New Times' Sarah Fenske, who won first place for column writing, will be interviewed by the Santa Fe Reporter's Zane Fischer (who won the column-writing award in 2008).
Phoenix New Times and Tucson Weekly took home a total of 13 first-place awards, with New Times winning in eight categories and the Weekly placing first in five. New Times staff writers Sarah Fenske and Paul Rubin both triumphed in two categories, and the Weekly's Margaret Regan managed the same feat. Both AAN papers also received a number of second- and third-place prizes. Winners of the awards, which honor the best in Arizona print journalism, were announced last week at a Phoenix banquet.
All the finalists in the "Newspapers: Local Circulation Weeklies" category were AAN members, but Todd Spivak came out on top for "Run Over By Metro." The prestigious awards, given by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., recognize the most outstanding watchdog journalism of the year. Judges said Spivak's "compelling and vivid narrative writing gives extraordinary power to the victims' stories and fuels the outrage over the agency's misconduct." The other finalists were Sarah Fenske of Phoenix New Times (for "Cracked Houses"), Dan Frosch of the Santa Fe Reporter (for "The Wexford Files"), and Matthew Fleischer of LA Weekly (for "Navahoax").
After writing about Detroit's cultural underground for seven years, Sarah Klein has developed a "hate-hate" relationship with the city and has decided to flee it for the sunny climes of California. "People are leaving Detroit -- in droves," she says, driven away by crime, lack of city services and a bad economy. Although she loves the Motor City and its "incredible people," she has had enough: "I'm tired of struggling, and I'm exhausted -- emotionally and physically. I'm ready to go."
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.
Between being an alt-weekly columnist and writing her novel, "The Big Love," Sarah Dunn worked as a Hollywood sitcom writer. Her novel is about an alt-newsweekly columnist who struggles to come to terms with her evangelical Christian background after her boyfriend abandons her. "Dunn stresses that many of the quirky and salacious character details came straight from her imagination, and not from her actual experiences at CP," Philadelphia City Paper's Arts & Books Editor Lori Hill writes.
