Salt Lake City Weekly won a total of 19 awards in the Utah Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists' annual awards on June 12. The Weekly's Stephen Dark was named Best Newspaper Reporter (his colleague Ted McDonough received an honorable mention in the same category). "Dark had the most diverse and interesting subject matter," the judges wrote. "His ability to tell a story in a clean and compelling manner also stood out." The alt-weekly also won first-place awards for Consumer Reporting, Government Reporting and Military Reporting.

Continue ReadingSalt Lake City Weekly Wins State Awards, Including Best Reporter

Of the five newspapers that applied for AAN membership this year, the Membership Committee is recommending that two be voted into the association: See Magazine and Inland Empire Weekly. The committee is also recommending that six current members who've experienced ownership changes be reaffirmed. AAN members will vote on these applications, as well as other matters, at Saturday afternoon's Annual Meeting. In addition, the Membership Committee is recommending that AAN take a look at allowing only-online publications to join the association. UPDATE (3:17 PM EST): The membership committee's report as originally uploaded was incorrect when it said that See's owner, Great West Newspapers, was "the largest" media chain in Canada. It's a large company, but not the largest in the country. The document in the resource library has been updated with the correct information.

Continue ReadingMembership Committee Recommends Two Papers for Admission to AAN

This morning's sessions have begun, and with them, the first full day of AAN's 32nd Annual Convention in Tucson is on its way. We'll have updates here at AAN.org over the next two days; for pictures of the confab, visit our Flickr page. To get short but sweet updates from various Twitterers here in Tucson, search for the hashtag #aan.

Continue ReadingAAN Convention Gets Rolling

We mentioned Lucian Truscott IV a few days back when looking at the Village Voice's complicated role in the watermark LGBT rights event at the Stonewall Inn 40 years ago. In a New York Times op-ed published yesterday, he remembers the scene and wonders why no one else covered it. "I blundered straight into the first moments of the police raid ... even a newly minted second lieutenant of infantry could see that it was a story," Truscott writes. "Amazingly, there was no TV coverage and only a few paragraphs in the city’s daily papers. Myths and controversies have arisen in the vacuum left by the mainstream news media."

Continue ReadingWriter Remembers Covering Stonewall for The Voice

The U.S. is sending nearly 1000 athletes to compete in the Maccabiah Games, the event sometimes referred to as the "Jewish Olympics" that takes place next month in Israel. Jewish News of Greater Phoenix reports that one of the competitors is none other than Phoenix New Times senior staff writer Paul Rubin, who will be on the men's fast-pitch softball team in the masters division. It won't be Rubin's first time at the games; he's a veteran, having won two gold medals and one silver medal while playing softball for the U.S. in 1985, 1989 and 1993. "Representing your country and your religion is a very important honor, and I'm taking it very seriously," he says.

Continue ReadingWho Knew? Phoenix New Times Staffer Heads to the Maccabiah Games

"Yes, for all you haters out there, Tucson has shown itself capable of attracting somebody other than the Jehovah's Witnesses during the summer," writes columnist Tom Danehy. He then lets his readers know how to spot a convention attendee. "If you see a bunch of people who look like a renaissance fair collided with Woodstock, where the women resemble what Janis Joplin would look like today (dead or alive), and the men look like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (or at just about any other stage of his life)," he writes, "that's not the AAN convention; that's the Fourth Avenue Street Fair." For more on the convention from the Weekly's perspective, check out this week's media column.

Continue ReadingTucson Weekly Columnist Explains Alt-Weekly Types to Readers