CL wins five national awards

We here at CL have always held a special place in our hearts for, well, us, but it’s nice when someone else notices.

Last week, at the annual meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, held in Madison, Wis., CL took home five awards for its news and arts coverage, as many as any other weekly in North America.

Staff writer Kevin Griffis, who covers city politics, won first place in the news story category for last August’s “Mystery Money,” which revealed that federal investigators were looking into fund-raising irregularities in Mayor Bill Campbell’s 1997 re-election campaign.

In music criticism, music editor Roni Sarig won second place for his writing, which helped define the current state of Southern rock, as well as Atlanta’s brand of hip-hop.

Staff writer Mara Shalhoup won third place in two categories: investigative reporting (for “The Bad Cops Club,” which exposed the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department’s failure to discipline misbehaving deputies), and health care reporting (for “Dealing Drugs the Legal Way,” which detailed how five patients of Georgia’s methadone clinics died in 2000).

Finally, staff writer Scott Henry took an honorable mention in the arts feature category for “Mind the Arts Gap,” a cover story which explored the wide funding gulf between the large arts organizations at the Woodruff Arts Center and Atlanta’s struggling second tier of arts groups.

?The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) is the trade organization for the alternative newspaper business. AAN is a diverse group of 121 non-daily free-circulation papers that are distributed in all of the major metropolitan areas of North America.??