The 2009 award winners come from 57 different member papers, including one paper that will be receiving honors in its first year of eligibility. The final placement of the winners will be announced at the AltWeekly Awards luncheon to be held on Friday, June 26 during the 32nd annual AAN Convention in Tucson.
Matt Singer, formerly a staffer at the Ventura County Reporter, moved up the coast to Portland in October with hopes of landing another alt-weekly editorial gig. The Wall Street Journal reports that Singer's quest has been less-than-successful, and uses that anecdote as a springboard into a piece that details how cities like Portland are dealing with a continual influx of hipsters and fewer and fewer jobs. (A story BusinessInsider.com summarized as: "Hipsters In Portland Can't Get Jobs Writing For Alt-Weekly Newspapers.") Willamette Week gets a shout-out in the story as well, for its new "Restaurant Apocalypse" column, which keeps track of the city's myriad restaurant closings.
Fort Collins Now is publishing its final issue this week, the Coloradoan reports. The paper was founded in 2003 as Fort Collins Weekly by AAN veterans Joel Dyer and Greg Campbell and sold to Nevada-based Swift Communications in 2007, which changed the name to Fort Collins Now. After the ownership change, Dyer and Campbell both remained involved with the paper, although they took on lesser roles. "It was clear that we have given Fort Collins Now a good length of time to see if it could turn a profit. It was really clear it wasn't happening," Campbell says. "It seems like the opportunity with Swift sort of delayed the inevitable." The weekly becomes the latest alt-style paper to close down in Fort Collins. In 2006, the AAN member Rocky Mountain Bullhorn ceased publication, and in 2008 the Rocky Mountain Chronicle did the same.
Jonathan Meador, a freelancer for the Louisville alt-weekly, was covering a local Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner last week when he was assaulted by local businessman and GOP activist J.D. Sparks, who was apparently trying to get the reporter to stop videotaping the event. Meador will pursue charges of fourth-degree assault and menacing, both misdemeanors, against Sparks.
On Friday, Nguyen Huy Vu's family decided to take the 34-year-old reporter off artificial life support following a Mother's Day heart attack that had left him brain dead, OC Weekly reports. In 2001, Vu was one of the first two journalists to receive an internship under AAN's Diversity Grant Program. MORE: A number of current and former Weekly staffers remember Vu fondly in the comments of this blog post.
