On Friday, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies announced the winners of the AltWeekly Awards in Portland, Oregon. In true striving-for-justice-and-equitability alt-weekly fashion, the awards cut a broad swath across a number of honorees (first, second, and third places plus honorable mentions for a whopping 46 categories) from papers from all across the country, but one award in particular stuck out: The award for best investigative reporting went to Kristen Lombardi, formerly of the Village Voice, for her piece on 9/11 wreckage fallout, "Death By Dust." The nominations came out at the beginning of May; Kristen was fired on May 25th.
Lombardi had been at the Voice for three years, through five editors-in-chief, six if you include the abortive hiring of Eric Wemple. The latest (and last) was Tony Ortega, current Village Voice editor, who, observed Gawker at the time, had published "a grand total of one article" in the almost three months since he had replaced David Blum. Gawker noted drily that the firing and non-publication of Lombardi's work "may indicate that [Ortega] is taking the paper in a less "advocacy journalism" direction." Which makes it particularly ironic that, in its press release today, the Village Voice proudly took credit for being "the recipient of three prestigious journalism awards presented over the weekend by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies," naming Lombardi along with film critic J.Hoberman (third prize for arts criticism) and music editor Rob Harvilla (second prizxe for music criticism). The press release did not mention that Lombardi was no longer with the paper. "Beyond congratulating Kristen for her win, we won't have any other comment," said Village Voice spokesperson Maggie Shnayerson. "We don't comment on personnel decisions."
Lombardi also declined to comment for this piece.