Win-win

Phoenix takes five in Phoenix

It would be a dimwitted cliché to say that the competition in this year's Association of Alternative Newsweeklies editorial contest was as hot as the Arizona desert, and cliché-mongers don't win journalism awards. But we did. At the AAN awards lunch, held June 2 at the ridiculously posh Arizona Biltmore resort, the Boston Phoenix emerged from a highly competitive field with four second-place and one third-place plaques, making the paper a finalist in more categories than was any member weekly with circulation above 54,000. Winners were selected from 763 entries in 13 categories.

Second-place honors went to Associate Arts Editor Jon Garelick (Music Criticism category) for his jazz reviews of Joe Morris (March 5, 1999), Cassandra Wilson (April 2, 1999), and (November 5, 1999); Senior Writer/media reporter Dan Kennedy (Media Reporting) for his scathing February 12, 1999, piece on the press and presidential candidate John McCain; Contributing Editor (classical music) Lloyd Schwartz (Arts Criticism) for his farewell to BSO conductor Seiji Ozawa (July 2, 1999), his preview of composer Peter Lieberson's BSO-commissioned Red Garuda (October 22, 1999), and his interview with The Great Gatsby composer John Harbison (December 10, 1999); and freelance illustrator Dale Stephanos (Illustration) for his July 1999 One in 10 cover illustration for Robert David Sullivan's story "Abe Lincoln Was a Fag and Other `Truths' of Gay History."

Ancestral Phoenix cartoonist David Sipress, whose association with the paper has been long enough to make his work a Phoenix signature, received third-place in the Cartoon category.

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies is a 123-member organization of newspapers who toil in self-imposed exile from the mainstream press. The AAN awards represent true peer recognition and we're mightily proud of our staffers and contributors who bathed us in glory.

-- Clif Garboden
Senior Managing Editor