I returned on Monday from five days in sunny (which is to say disgustingly hot) Tucson, Arizona, where I was attending the annual AAN convention, and learning all sorts of things about emerging (and existing) technology, and hashing out the future of alt.weeklies. I also ran for the board of AAN and won (of course, I was unopposed) and now serve as that board’s editorial chair (which means I can help shape, hopefully, some of its programming and services in the coming year).
But perhaps the best part of the trip was SFR’s showing at the annual awards ceremony. We won four first place awards, the most first places of any paper in our size category (and we tied with LA Weekly, which had the most first place awards in the large paper category).
Firsts were won by Angela Moore for cover design, Richard Borge in illustration, Dave Maass, Ursula Coyote and random Zombie fans for our Halloween Zombie issue (I’ll include myself in that, since I did contribute a video) and Dave Maass and staff for our former blog, Swing State of Mind. We also won a third place award for A Qasimi’s food writing and an honorable mention for our Devour, Locavore’s Guide to Santa Fe issue.

SwingStateofMind.com, SFR’s 2008 election blog, has been named a finalist in the blog category for the 2009 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards.

This means, in the smaller division for alternative newspapers, SFR is leading in number of finalists.

I was really proud of this blog. We had polls and a Twitter feed and little scrolling widgets and the Web o Power. During the Democratic National Convention, we live blogged (with live streaming and chat) and captured some priceless footage of the protests. We laid into Jerome Block Jr. and covered even the most fringe candidates. We even interviewed the guy who put the phrase “cunts for eyes” in Hillary Clinton’s mouth.

It was a good year at SSOM, though I predict we’ll take second.

Cross-posted at Maassive.com.

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies announced the finalists in its annual journalism contest today, and SFR appears to have done well yet again.

Or to quote the story:

In the large-circulation division, The Village Voice leads the pack with nine awards. In the small-circulation division, The Santa Fe Reporter is set to go home with at least five prizes.

Yes! The “at-least” part is that there are still a few outstanding categories in which judging has yet to be completed.

In addition to nominations for cover design (Angela Moore), illustration, food writing and special issues (the 2008 Devour, edited by Gwyneth Doland), Dave Maass et. al was nominated for his Zombie cover story, Things to Do in Santa Fe When You’re Undead, in the Format-Busting category (now would be a good time for you to watch my Zombie movie that accompanied that story, on the off chance that I haven’t already made you watch it 20 times).

Yay Dave! Yay Gwyneth! Yay Angela! Go SFR!

We’ll find out placement (1st, 2nd or 3rd) in June during AAN’s annual convention.