Gustavo Arellano and his ¡Ask a Mexican! column was honored in the large ciculation category at last week's 2009 AltWeekly Awards presentation during the
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) convention in Tuscon,
Arizona.
Arellano received honorable mention in the “Column: circulation 50,000 and over” category for his ¡Ask a Mexican! columns “Why won't Mexicans vote for a black man?,” “Is It Racist to Call a Mexican Working at a Coffee Shop a 'Beaner'?” and “Cherry-Picking CNsar Chávez.”
Unlike, say, the recent Los Angeles Press Club awards, where OC Weekly competed against papers of a similar size for regional honors, for the national AAN awards Orange County's newsweekly vied in the large cirulation categories against much larger tabloids such as the Village Voice, LA Weekly and Chicago Reader.
Speaking of our big sister paper, LA Weekly led the large-circulation division for the second year in a row with four first-place wins. Oops, almost forgot, LAW is now to be referred to by its nickname, “the Colossus of Culver City.” Congrats to all.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.