The PEN American Center named Laura Berg as the recipient of this year's prestigious PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award. Berg, who faced a sedition investigation after writing a letter to the editor of the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, will receive the $10,000 prize at a gala tonight in New York City. "When Laura Berg sat down to write her letter to the editor, she was enacting her most basic constitutional right and affirming our national faith that exercising this right is an act of patriotism and civic engagement," PEN Freedom to Write program director Larry Siems says in a release. "That her letter was greeted instead as a threat to overthrow the government shows just how far we deviated from our national values in the years following 9/11." The New York Times applauded the PEN Center's decision, editorializing this weekend that Berg was "well chosen" to receive award.
Luke Y. Thompson has a role in Wicked Lake, a horror film premiering this weekend in Hollywood. According to IMDB's roll call of cast members, Thompson plays "Half-Idiot." The film was written by Adam Rockoff, directed by Zach Passero, and features music by Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen.
Deputy editor Joe Donnelly's position was cut by Village Voice Media, LA Observed reports. "I can tell you that Joe Donnelly was one of the reasons the L.A. Weekly has been so strong over the past few years," Weekly editor Laurie Ochoa says. "The good news is that Joe plans on doing a lot more writing, much of which we plan to publish. He's been the guiding force behind so many books through the years -- I think it's time he writes his own book." According to LA Observed, Donnelly will do just that -- he plans on writing a novel. Also, longtime copy editor Sheila Beaumont, who has worked at the paper for 26 years, has retired rather than make the commute to Culver City, where the Weekly is moving next week.
He replaces Pat Kelly, publisher for the past six years, who "traded our local glitz for a beachcomber's life in Mexico," according to the Weekly. Spotleson, who helped launch the Weekly in 1998, has also worked on the editorial side within the New Times chain. There have been other moves in the paper's offices recently. Sales manager Nelson Oshita is now associate publisher, and the paper picked up two new staffers from Las Vegas Life: managing editor Ken Miller and associate editor T.R. Witcher.
AAN members took home a fair share of the honors last week in the First Amendment Awards competition sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists' Fort Worth pro chapter, winning a combined three first places among eight print categories in the Texas-Oklahoma contest. Fort Worth Weekly took first place in the Reporting on Open Government and student categories, while the Houston Press finished first in the Defending the Disadvantaged category. The Weekly also won an additional second-place award, and the Press took one more second- and third-place finish.
Both the Philadelphia City Paper and Philadelphia Weekly took home plenty of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's 2008 Keystone Press Awards. City Paper's Tom Namako and Doron Taussig placed first and second, respectively, in the speciality category of Distinguished Writing in a Weekly. The Weekly won the Sweepstakes award for the division in which alt-weeklies are eligible. In competition within that division, the Weekly won 11 awards, including first-place finishes in Feature Story, Headline Writing, News Feature Story, News Photo, and Online Journalistic Innovation. City Paper also nabbed 11 awards in that division, including first-place wins in Business or Consumer Story, Column, Investigative Reporting, and News Beat Reporting.
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