Tag Archives: aan

LAWBI Wins AAN Award for Best Individual Blog

So, yeah, I won.

I honestly didn’t think LAWBI had a shot, as this isn’t exactly the usual lefty call-for-revolution sort of thing, so I’m truly surprised, and very, very stoked. I won a few awards over the course of my career as a full-time, aherm *cough* “journalist,” and while it pleased me, I never really thought of them as a big deal. But this is different, because it comes directly from the alt-weekly community–a group, a network and an idea that’s near and dear to my heart.

Alt-weeklies are always the scrappy punk-rock underdog publications in any community, the papers that cover the cool bands and feature writers for whom style and passion are every bit as important as content. They were the blogs before there were blogs, with the important distinction that you had to know a bit about your subject and be able to write worth a shit to get published. The day a decade ago when I was offered a full-time position at Creative Loafing (then Weekly Planet) remains one of the proudest of my life thus far, and I hope the alt-weeklies keep printing, tilting at various political windmills and generally being awesome for a long, long time to come.

LAWBI A Finalist in the 2011 AltWeekly Awards!

How about that?

The folks over at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies have announced the finalists for their annual awards program, and Life As We Blow It has made the final bracket in the Blog (Individual) category.

This bitchspace has a long and intimate history with the Tampa edition of storied alt-weekly chain Creative Loafing. The crew over there helped make LAWBI a reality after I left my full-time position as a CL staffer; most of the best stuff here ranĀ in its print edition, and they continue to throw me work now and again. I’m totally indebted to David, Joe, Leilani, James, Eric, Ham Gravy, Alex and the rest–obviously, without that association, this honor and exposure wouldn’t have been possible.

Wish I could make the AAN shindig in New Orleans on July 22, but I believe I’m taking down several linear miles of chain-link fence that day, which is much cooler than drinking and snarking with other alt-weekly writers. (Glurt.)