Alaska Press Club packet

This has been somewhat of a working vacation, what with a book at the printer, another in editing, and the Alaska Press Club awards contest deadline being January 21--three days before we get back. So for the last several days Hans and I have been going through the papers I brought down. We finally plowed through them all last night and chose a bunch of possibles for submissions. Most of the press club awards have to do with reporting, and there is very little reporting in the Republic. There is a lot of opinion and editorializing. So I ended up submitting work in the following categories: Best Editorial Cartoon, Best Editorial Writing, Best Columnist, and Best Series. (I just hope my photographers will submit something; we've got some damn fine photographic work in the Republic!) Despite having firm confidence in the high quality of the writing and acumen of my many contributors, I often feel at a loss for these awards contests. We just don't fit well into the categories available. (This is in part why I started the Publisher's Picks.) I'd like to try finding some other organization to submit people's work to also next year, something that might be a better fit with the kind of work I publish.

We're just not a regular newspaper.