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Phoenix.com wins at AAN conference

Some feathers in our cap

There are contests and there are contests, but the annual Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) competition is one of the hardest — and sweetest — to win. And a first-place win is sugary beyond compare.

So good for us: this year, thePhoenix.com Web site was named Number One by a panel of expert judges assembled by the Medill School of Journalism at Chicago’s Northwestern University. Phoenix Web editor CARLY CARIOLI was on hand to collect the honor this past weekend at the 2008 AAN convention in his hometown of Philadelphia — where the heat and humidity were so high you felt as if you were trapped in a clothes dryer with a dozen damp towels.

Media reporter ADAM REILLY fielded the third-place prize in the hotly contested media-reporting/criticism category for his regular “Don’t Quote Me” column in the Boston Phoenix.

And Maine-based freelancer LANCE TAPLEY, who won first-place in the long-form news-story category in 2007 for his “Torture in Maine Prisons” exposé, landed an honorable mention for investigative reporting this year for his follow-up features to that series, which appeared in our sister edition, the Portland Phoenix.

At 30 years since its founding, AAN is a venerable and respected, if still somewhat rag-tag, “trade association” comprising more than 120 alternative weeklies throughout the US and Canada.

Congrats to all our winners, who prevailed against the stiffest competition we face all year.