The International Association of Culinary Professionals has announced the finalists for this year's Bert Greene Awards, which honor "one of the most sophisticated and dynamic genres in contemporary journalism" -- food writing. This year, both the Houston Press and SF Weekly are finalists in the brand-new Blog category, and the Village Voice's Sarah Digregorio is a finalist in the Culinary Writing without Recipes category for her February 2009 piece on foie gras. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Portland on April 22.

Continue ReadingThree Alt-Weeklies Among Bert Greene Award Finalists

Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC announced today that it has partnered with happy-hour guide GoTime to launch a mobile app detailing more than 15,000 happy hour deals in 30 cities across the country. Users can search happy hours by name, location, time and even type of cuisine, all within one location-aware mobile application."We want to be everywhere our readers are, and that's out on the town, anywhere in the country," VVMH president and COO Scott Tobias says in a release. "We own the night -- and this app really delivers on that." MORE: Seattle Weekly's Mike Seely has more on the origins of the partnership with GoTime.

Continue ReadingVVMH Partners with GoTime to Launch Happy Hours Mobile App

A San Francisco judge today heard arguments on whether SF Weekly should be forced to give half of its advertising revenue to the San Francisco Bay Guardian as part of the Guardian's continuing efforts to collect on the 2008 judgment in the predatory pricing suit between the two papers. The judge issued a "late tentative ruling" that suggested he will do just that, and he said he will give the final ruling soon. Meanwhile, the Guardian has asked a judge to add Village Voice Media, LLC and Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC to the companies that make up the Weekly's parent company in the judgment. (When the Guardian's suit was initially filed, the Weekly was still owned by pre-merger New Times.) A hearing on that matter has been set for March 12. The Weekly has said it is waiting to make any payments to the Guardian until it exhausts its appeals. MORE: Seattle Weekly wonders why The Stranger is sending a reporter to San Francisco to cover this, when Stranger editor Dan Savage's sex column runs in many papers that SF Weekly's parent company owns.

Continue ReadingBay Guardian/SF Weekly Case Back in Court Today

Brian Stauffer has received the Society of Illustrators' highest honor for a cover he conceived for Phoenix New Times. The winning illustration will be printed in a hard-bound book later this year. "I can't really describe how surreal this experience is for me, given that I started out in this business 18 years ago assigning illustrations to the industry legends I now consider close friends," Stauffer writes on his blog.

Continue ReadingLongtime VVM Illustrator Takes Top Prize

"Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate." This Voice headline on the day after Brown won the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy caught the eyes of many observers at the time, and now the president himself has referenced it. "There was apparently a headline after the Massachusetts election," Obama said in remarks to Senate Democrats, according to Talking Points Memo. "The Village Voice announced that Republicans win a 41-59 majority. It's worth thinking about. We still have to lead."

Continue ReadingPresident Obama Quotes Village Voice Headline

The San Francisco Bay Guardian last week filed its response to SF Weekly's appeal of the 2008 jury award in the Guardian's predatory-pricing lawsuit against the Weekly. The Weekly says it will file one more reply with the court within the next month or so, at which point the Court of Appeals will either set a date for oral arguments or issue a ruling based on what has been submitted by the two parties. In related news, the Guardian reports that a federal judge last week rejected the attempts of Weekly parent company Village Voice Media Holdings to avoid a state court proceeding where it may be added to the judgment against the Weekly.

Continue ReadingBay Guardian/SF Weekly Case Moves Along

The Sex-Positive Journalism Awards have announced the winners of the 2009 Sexies, the annual awards that go to stories that "improve the quality of dialogue around sex and create a more well-informed reading public." Seven Days' Judith Levine took home a first-place win in the Opinion category, where she also tied for second place with a Village Voice piece by Tristan Taormino. Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper picked up a third-place win in the Columns category for "The Sexist," while in the News/Features (Alt-Weeklies, Monthlies) category the Alibi's Marisa Demarco placed third and Rich Kane (OC Weekly) and Michael J. Mooney (New Times Broward-Palm Beach) both were named runners-up.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weeklies Pick Up Some Wins at the 2009 ‘Sexies’ Awards

The Voice's blog post on the result of yesterday's special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy -- titled "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate" -- was singled out by The Guardian's Michael Tomasky as the headline of the day. "Someone put their witty cap on today over there at the Village Voice," he writes.

Continue ReadingMichael Tomasky: Village Voice Scores ‘Headline of the Day’