Two months ago, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia announced finalists for their annual awards, and the Arkansas Times received seven nominations — a personal best for us. The awards have been celebrating “local journalism, creative design and production work, and scrappy, successful publishing companies doing their part for democracy” since 1996.
On Friday, AAN announced at its annual conference that two of those nominations had turned into first-place wins, with Arkansas Times Publisher Alan Leveritt and former Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus winning in the Column and Column-Political categories respectively. (The last time we scored two first-place awards at AAN was in 1999!)
Leveritt’s honor came for his work last year on “From the Farm,” a reflective monthly column that judges called “both charming and informative, drawing readers onto his family farm, painting them a vivid picture of a local scene, and offering them helpful gardening advice in the process.” Kurrus won for his series of columns about the Arkansas LEARNS Act and the school voucher program it created. The column “goes deep on local education issues but with an accessible voice making the issue of privatizing education very real for the reader,” judges said. His three winning pieces can be found here, here and here.
The rest of our nominated work from 2023 also got various accolades from AAN. Coming in third place in the Feature Story category is Brooke Nelson Alexander’s “‘Grief, twice’: One family’s struggle to keep access to the burial plots of their ancestors.” Judges said the following:
“Ms. Alexander shows in this fine piece the double shot of grief one Black family faces as continued development threatens their access to their ancestral burial grounds. As it stands the Lewises have had to request one community’s gate code just to access their kin’s final resting place. Now, a new landowner has purchased land that includes the cemetery plot and plans to build on it. It’s double the grief because families like the Lewises grieve when their loved ones are buried and then when these resting places become hard to get to or destroyed. That landowners can dictate the terms under which families can visit their loved ones is an added insult to injury. Those with long-held ties to the land want to preserve these places because they are part of a larger story about the history they lived and the hardship that made them who they are. Taking that away would be an act of erasure — not just for the family, but American history as a whole.”
Stephanie Smittle’s “Fighting fentanyl: How Arkansas is spending its opioid settlement fortune” received an honorable mention in the Health Care Reporting category. The judges’ comments:
“Accountability journalism is vital to keeping the public informed when large sums of money land in their community. Stephanie Smittle’s work tracks where Arkansas’s aid money for fighting the opioid epidemic is going, and shows how urgently it is needed – and how a variety of local providers and organizations are using varying approaches to address the crisis.”
Third place for Cannabis Coverage went to Griffin Coop, who impressed judges with “excellent writing and reporting on the nuances of cannabis-related issues and legislation, but going beyond standard reporting to find interesting topics that expand the cannabis conversation.”
Artist Kasten Searles’ contributions to a cover story last August, “Trash the Vote: Arkansas blows it on counting ballots,” scored her an honorable mention in the Illustration category. Judges praised her drawing as “not only a deft, clear illustration of the concept, but super appealing visually and compositionally. Love the little bits of paper flying up at the bottom.” Here’s the image that appeared on our cover:
Last but not least, a team of folks — Arkansas Times art director Mandy Keener, Arkansas Times photographer Brian Chilson, freelance illustrator Layet Johnson, as well as Searles — won second place in Cover Design for their work on three magazines last year. The issues were our August 2023 issue (Searles’ design, above); our September 2023 issue, which featured a photo illustration of the Little Rock Nine statue at the Arkansas Capitol; and our annual “Best and Worst of 2023” issue from December, with a “Candy Land” theme drawn by Johnson.
What the judges had to say: “These feel so strong compositionally and conceptually. Love the balance between visual info and calm (well except for the candy land reference which HAS to be over the top!).”
Here are the three covers in question. The full issues, along with all of our archives, can be found online.
