It's over. We've selected the winners of the 2009 Utne Independent Press Awards and we've made them known. We've also demystified the process a bit. Our good friend Chuck Olsen, responsible for our video response to Jon Stewart, spent many hours wandering Utne Reader headquarters with a camera and a microphone. Here's the result:

Thanks again to the delightful and competent  Chuck Olsen  of  MN Stories  and  The Uptake . 

Fans of John O’Connor’s brilliant travel account “The Boil,” which appeared in Utne’s Jan.-Feb. issue, should check out this other lovely—and somewhat cringe-inducing—tale he penned for The Believer.

In “Avian,” O’Connor discovers the handiwork of the loggerhead shrike, a.k.a. the Butcher Bird, which spends its days skillfully filleting prey on thorn bushes and then disemboweling their carcasses. The measures are gruesome, but necessary, because it lacks the talon-power of other predatory birds. It’s also facing declining numbers in North America.

O’Connor was particularly transformed by the chilling death of a tiny green lizard. After staring down the author, the bird made quick business of crucifying its tiny meal. O’Connor writes of the slain creature, “Its intestines, naked to the world, shone like cooked spaghetti…. I began to feel a grudging respect for the Butcher Bird. To see an animal overcome its genetic shortcomings in such dramatic fashion, supported by a brain the size of a lentil, well, it gives a man hope.”

The Believer was nominated for a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award for its arts coverage.

Source: The Believer

Image by Henry McLin, licensed under Creative Commons.

Most dollhouses scenes don’t feature miniature corpses hanging from ropes or life-like blood spatters evoking a crime-scene feel in each room. Most probably aren’t used by police officers, either.

            The latest issue of Baltimore’s Urbanite features a handful of hidden secrets lurking in the Charm City, which includes a 60-some-year-old collection known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Michael Yockel writes, “In naming her creations [Frances Glessner] Lee invokes a police dictum: ‘Convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.’”

            All told there are 18 tiny, gruesome dioramas, which are used in seminars to school police in forensics and solving murder cases. Too bad Jimmy McNulty and crew didn’t have these.

The Urbanite is nominated for a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award for its social/cultural coverage.

Source: Urbanite

POZ, an indispensable magazine of “life, health, & HIV,” turns 15 this year—and to mark its anniversary, the publication is donating all advertising revenue from its forthcoming May issue to the Denver Principles Project, a new initiative from the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) that seeks to dramatically increase the group’s membership and, as it follows, political and social clout.

In its March issue, POZ asks people to (re)commit to the cause:

The last eight years have seen a dramatic reversal of what our movement accomplished in the early years:

• Science-based HIV prevention programs have been gutted in favor of abstinence-only or abstinence-until-marriage programs. The result? Hundreds of thousands of new HIV infections, mostly among young people of color.
• Hysteria-driven prosecution of people with HIV for failing to disclose their status has helped create an image of so-called “AIDS Monsters” in the media and further fueled the criminalization—and stigmatization—of people with HIV. The result? We are increasingly marginalized and portrayed as vectors of disease who must be controlled and regulated rather than as what we are: human beings struggling with a life-threatening disease who deserve compassion, human rights and adequate, affordable health care.
• While the United States has technically lifted the specific ban on HIV-positive people from entering the country, HIV remains on the list of contagious diseases that can be used to prohibit people with HIV from immigrating to or visiting America. The result? The nation that represents itself as a beacon of freedom is, instead, a leader in discrimination, setting a shameful example of intolerance and ignorance.

Now, it is time for all people who want to end the AIDS epidemic to recommit to the spirit of The Denver Principles—thus ensuring that the voices of people with HIV are heard.

In addition to donating May’s ad revenue, POZ also will republish the original Denver Principles manifesto, which, drafted in 1983, articulated the foundation of the self-empowerment movement for people with HIV/AIDS. To get involved in the Denver Principles Project, visit NAPWA online.

More to read/love: POZ is an Utne Independent Press Award winner for health/wellness coverage. Its editor in chief Regan Hofmann recently guest blogged for our daily best-of-the-web extravaganza, Alt Wire.

Source: POZ

Two and a half years after he co-founded Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, which won last year’s Utne Independent Press Award for best new publication, Kenneth Baer nabbed a job in the new administration. He’s now heading up communications and strategic planning at the Office of Management and Budget, the office President Obama has charged with boosting government transparency.

Baer is leaving Democracy with a supremely talented staff, including Andrei Cherny, the co–founding editor, and E.J. Dionne, Jr., who was named chair of the journal’s editorial committee in December. The new issue takes stock of Obama’s America, with dispatches from Orlando Patterson (on equality), Geoffrey Stone (on liberty), Jedediah Purdy (on community), and others.

As other book review forums throw in the towel, the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) is planning a contest to nurture young book critics. Two cheers! The competition is open to writers under 30, who are invited to submit their reviews this September via the VQR website. Essays should be between 2,000 and 3,500 words long, and the book must have been published in 2008. Final judging will rest in the hands of Rebecca Skloot, Oscar Villalon, and VQR editor Ted Genoways.

The victor will receive $1000, but even more covet-worthy: The winning review will be published in VQR, a perennial Utne Independent Press Award nominee in the category of best writing. The winner also will be contracted to write three more reviews.

(Thanks, BookFox.)

In the latest episode of the UtneCast, editor in chief David Schimke and librarian Danielle Maestretti sit down with Utne.com assistant editor Bennett Gordon to talk about the 2007 Utne Independent Press Awards. After 19 years, the awards have changed quite a bit, with two new categories (In-Depth/Investigative and Health/Wellness) added this year. Schimke and Maestretti talk about the new categories and how the staff picked the best magazines of the year. 

For more on the awards, visit www.utne.com/uipa2007, and stay tuned for Part 2 of our UtneCast on the winners. 

 UtneCast: UIPA 2007 : Play in Popup

The new issue of punk zine Razorcake (#40) has some advice for aspiring zinesters: Think before you write. In her inaugural column for Razorcake, Maddy "Tight Pants" offers five compelling reasons to walk away from the typewriter—i.e., "Don't write a zine to 'set the record straight' about your break-up"—that ought to be included in the indie-culture starter kit (is somebody working on one of those?). I most appreciate Maddy’s second point, "Don’t write a zine because you think it will convince people to become vegan straightedge militants," though I also applaud #5, "Don’t write a zine about bike riding." Maddy suggests abandoning these familiar subjects in favor of more "ridiculous concepts" like, say, cougar attacks (as in Jacob Stoltz's informative Should You Encounter a Cougar). Other off-the-wall zines can be found among the nominees for this year's Utne Independent Press Awards. —Danielle Maestretti