On Tuesday, the storms battering California knocked out the power at the Weekly's headquarters -- in the middle of deadline day, no less. But with the help of a car mechanic across the street and a 5,000-watt generator, the staff successfully pushed through the dark hours. When the power returned, deputy editor Mark C. Anderson writes, "we were well on our way to a complete paper."

Continue ReadingMonterey County Weekly Survives Deadline-Day Power Outage

The newly-launched free app "features over 200 concert and event listings that you can sort by date, nearby and neighborhood, plus over 1000 easy-to-search restaurant listings, including recommendations from our Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold," the Weekly says. In addition, the app will feature event and nightlife coverage and slideshows.

Continue ReadingL.A. Weekly Launches iPhone App

The Association of Food Journalists last week named the winners of its 2009 Awards Competition at a banquet in New Orleans. Seattle Weekly's Jonathan Kauffman won first place for Best Newspaper Restaurant Criticism and Creative Loafing (Atlanta)'s Besha Rodell took home first for Best Newspaper Food Feature. (Riverfront Times' Kristen Hinman took third in that category.) Kauffman's victory marks the fourth year in a row that a Village Voice Media paper has won the Best Newspaper Restaurant Criticism category.

Continue ReadingOnce Again, Alt-Weeklies Fare Well in Food Journalists’ Awards

"The project has been both the most benign undertaking of the year and the most important," Weekly editor Rachael Daigle writes, "as an industrywide slump forced staffing changes while we simultaneously rolled out a new website, inaugurated first-ever supplements, and then radically changed Best of Boise." She says "the new design represents a maturity" in the nearly-18-year-old alt-weekly.

Continue ReadingBoise Weekly Unveils Redesigned Print Product

At a debate held in a local bar over the weekend, Seattle mayoral candidates Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan were given one minute to answer each question, with the option of being granted a time extension ... if they took a shot of whiskey. Weekly managing editor and debate co-moderator Mike Seely tells KING 5 News that the forum was designed to get the candidates to show off their personalities instead of relying on the usual sound bites, and also to bring the race to a new audience. "We figure we had a captive audience that had about no interest in politics, and we figured we'd force feed them politics," Seely says.

Continue ReadingSeattle Weekly’s Mayoral Debate Helps Candidates Reach New Audience

Jeffrey Billman, who won first place for investigative reporting in the under-50,000 circulation category for his Orlando Weekly piece "Might Makes Right," will discuss the story with Weekly editor Bob Whitby in a conversation moderated by the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Tim Redmond. Like last week, the live chat will happen right here on AAN.org and will take place Friday at 3 pm EDT.

Continue ReadingAnother ‘How I Got that Story’ Live Chat Slated for This Friday

The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announced the winners of its 2009 Excellence in Journalism Awards last week, and three alt-weeklies took home honors. The SF Weekly's Joe Eskenazi won the Explanatory Journalism (print, non-daily) award for "Service with a Snarl," a piece that "examines, with clarity and humor, the laws around the use of service animals in San Francisco." Kathleen Richards of the East Bay Express won the Investigative Journalism (print, non-daily) award for "Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0," which the judges say is "a strong example of consumer-affairs reporting." And the staff of the North Coast Journal won the Student Special Project award for "Meltdown," a project the paper undertook with students from Humboldt State University's Investigative Reporting Class.

Continue ReadingThree AAN Members Win Northern California SPJ Awards

Las Vegas CityLife, Las Vegas Weekly and the Reno News & Review took home a total of 74 awards at the annual Better Newspaper Contest put on by the Nevada Press Association. CityLife won 34 awards, with 16 first-place finishes; the News & Review won 28 awards, including 11 firsts; and the Weekly won 12 awards, four of which were first-place.

Continue ReadingNevada Alt-Weeklies Win Big in State Press Contest