2002 Alternative Newsweekly Award Winners Announced

Posted on June 7, 2002

For the second consecutive year, Gambit Weekly of New Orleans led the pack in the Alternative Newsweekly Awards with four first-place awards, followed by LA Weekly with three firsts, and Independent Weekly, The Local Planet Weekly, and The Village Voice, each with two. The awards, announced at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies annual convention, recognize superior journalism and graphic design among the 120 AAN member papers, which include alternative newsweeklies across the United States and Canada.

A group of Columbia University journalism students took first place in feature writing among smaller circulation papers with a series of first-person vignettes from near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and the days following. "Seven Days at Ground Zero" appeared in The Local Planet Weekly of Spokane, Wash. The Local Planet Weekly was also awarded a first place in media reporting. Larry Shook's "All in the Family" reported on conflicts of interest in the Cowles family's ownership of both downtown Spokane development and the Spokesman-Review.

The Village Voice took a first for photography for Andre Souroujon's photograph of downtown Manhattan overlaid with a pre-Sept. 11 souvenir postcard that replicates the missing trade towers. The judges said the photograph "could have been trite, but the execution was of such a high caliber that it didn't come off that way at all." The Village Voice also won first-place in feature writing for Michael Kamber's series on illegal immigrants, "Crossing to the Other Side."

In the small circulation category, Gambit won firsts in column-political commentary (Clancy DuBos), news feature (Katy Reckdahl), health care (Michael Tisserand), and music criticism (Scott Jordan). Overall, Gambit was honored with five Alternative Newsweekly Awards. Last year, Gambit also brought home four first-place awards and nine in all.

Melinda Ruley and James Morrison, of Durham, North Carolina's Independent Weekly, were awarded first place for column writing and arts criticism, respectively.

In the large-circulation category, three of LA Weekly's five awards were first-place finishers: health care (Sara Catania), illustration (Brian Stauffer), and news feature (Celeste Fremon).

In the second annual Alternative Newsweekly Award Cartoon competition, Garret Gaston won first place for his strip "La Petite Camera," among those cartoons that appear in five or fewer AAN papers. Among cartoons that appear in more than five papers, Ken Fisher (Ruben Bolling) took top honors for "Tom the Dancing Bug."

AAN is a not-for-profit organization representing the alternative newsweekly industry, which includes publications such as Phoenix New Times, Chicago Reader and San Francisco Bay Guardian. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., AAN represents 120 newsweeklies in the United States and Canada with combined total weekly circulation of more than 7.6 million and a reach of more than 20 million readers.