Bill Clinton Speaks at AltWeekly Confab, As Awards Are Announced

By: E&P Staff The winners of the 2006 AltWeekly Awards were announced Friday in Little Rock, Ark., at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual convention.

The Canadian paper The Coast was a big winner, taking several prizes.

Speakers at the confab included former Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton. "Don't contribute to the 'cartoon-ization' of American politics and American politicians," Clinton told the crowd. He spoke longer than expected and then signed autographs.

"The greatest thing about not being president anymore is I can say whatever the hell I please," he said, inspiring a roar from the audience, according to an AAN account.

He also said, "Often, when I travel around, I try to read your newspapers. ... You tend to fill in the blanks more, so you fulfill a very important function and I thank you for that."

According to the AAN release on the award, "OC Weekly dominated the large-circulation column categories, with Gustavo Arellano's 'Ask a Mexican!' taking first place for Column, and Rebecca Schoenkopf's 'Commie Girl' winning Political Column.

"In fact, the awards were widely distributed this year. Creative Loafing (Atlanta) was the only newspaper other than OC Weekly and The Coast to win more than one first-place award: It got nods for Bill Addison's food column and Jim Stawniak's photography.

"There were familiar names among the first-place winners, such as photographer Walter Coker of Folio Weekly, who had won six previous awards, or Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss, who topped the investigative reporting category (large division) for the second year in a row....

"Arkansas Times, the convention's host paper, topped the Feature Story category (small division) for 'Lord God,' Leslie Newell Peacock's take on the ivory-bill woodpecker, a story that was in in the news last month when its structure was, ahem, borrowed in a New York Times piece.

"Krestia DeGeorge of City Newspaper placed first in the smaller circulation section of the Media Reporting/Criticism category, earning her the Connye Miller Award, a cash prize of $300. Matt Spaur endowed the award in the memory of his wife, who was the founding editor of The Local Planet Weekly in Spokane, Wash., and, along with him, its co-publisher. She died in June 2003 of porphyria.

"This is the 11th year of the annual awards contest, which recognizes the best work from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' 124 member papers. In addition to receiving a trophy, first-place winners will be collected in a book, Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2006."

The winners can all be found at:

http://aan.org/alternative/Aan/ViewArticle?oid=oid%3A166086