Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories. [Ed. note: But today we're just writing about ourselves! Click here to see the full list of MN SPJ Page One Awards winners.]
Jessica Armbruster
Second place in Arts & Entertainment Reporting for "The Disabled Babes of Burlesque"
I discovered The DisabiliTease Festival while looking for things to keep an eye on for Event Horizon, and I instantly wanted to know more. How do you strip when you’re in a wheelchair? (Sexily! Acrobatically!) How hard is it to navigate all the ancient performance spaces in town when you have limited mobility? (Hard!) How badass are these women? (Very!)
For the story, I talked to two Twin Cities-based burlesque artists, Minda Mae and Holly Dazzle. Good art often comes from the things we’re up against and our willingness to persevere, and I am so thankful these two women were willing to be open with me and share their personal struggles, successes, and, in the case of Dazzle, her latest bedazzling project—a pair of high heels.
Jay Boller
Second place in Profile Reporting for "Barkhad Abdi Moved Back to Minneapolis, But He Never Left Hollywood"; third place in Business News Reporting for "Meet the Serbian Businessman/DJ Who Runs the Zombie AI Southwest Journal"; third place in Editorials for "With Duluth’s Park Point, Kathy Cargill Crossed the Billionaire PR Precipice"
When I approached this Barkhad Abdi story, I had assumed two things: 1) that he still lived in Hollywood, and 2) that he'd been a one-hit wonder in Captain Phillips. (His role in Nathan Fielder's The Curse reignited my interest.) Turns out Abdi had just moved back to Minneapolis, and that he enjoyed and continues to enjoy a wonderful career as an actor/filmmaker. He was quite generous reliving his pre-fame youth in Minneapolis, where he fell in love with moviemaking before becoming an unlikely movie star. “I’m very proud to open doors, to be that one person,” Abdi told me. “I want to help others by writing, directing, telling stories… stories about refugees, stories about Minnesota, my story.”
Confession: Sometimes when journalists read national stories they admire—like, say, Wired's "Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin"—they attempt to shoehorn a local angle. To my great luck, the AI clickbait kingpin in question, Nebojša Vujinović Vujo, had a onetime Minnesota URL in his portfolio of spammy zombie sites—the ol' Southwest Journal. It was a trip talking to Vujo about the "legal and normal things" he does with his AI-powered click mills, and I made sure to balance those perspectives with those of Zac Farber (less than thrilled with the site's fate). "This is a call to your readers: I'm open for business. OK, let's create—let's make America great again!" concludes Vujo, who assured me I have a place to crash if I ever visit Eastern Europe.
It may seem like one million years ago, but folks were briefly obsessed with what married-in billionaire heir Kathy Cargill was up to as she gobbled up Duluth's Park Point. My contribution to the discourse? A pugnacious essay about the titanic chasm between her wealth and almost everybody else's, and how that can warp and derange one's perspective. Cargill to her, er, credit, served as the perfect villain throughout this saga—don't pee in her Cheerios!
Em Cassel
Third place in Arts & Entertainment Reporting for "‘It’s the New Meat Raffle’: Inside the Growing World of MN Gun Bingo"
One thing you might not know about me is that I'm Racket's resident gun nut.
OK, "gun nut" is a little strong—I think this country has a deranged relationship with firearms and am all for stricter gun control regulations. But I do semi-regularly go to the range and I do really like shooting guns. So when I stumbled across "Second Amendment Bingo" on the website of an Anoka bar a while back, it took almost nothing to topple me over into the world of gun bingo, which, as I came to learn, is an increasingly formidable fundraising tool for all kinds of nonprofits throughout Minnesota (especially rural Minnesota).
Fire departments, first responders, baseball teams, VFW halls, outdoor organizations—they're all raising money via gun bingo. And I will confess here what I did not in the conclusion of my story: I really wanted to win a gun during the Ducks Unlimited gun bingo I attended in Stillwater. Maybe next time.
Keith Harris
First place in A&E/Culture Criticism/Reviews for " A Complete Unknown’ Lives Up to Its Title" and "‘Reagan’ Is the Movie Ronald Reagan Would Have Made About His Life"; second place in A&E/Culture Criticism/Reviews for "This Is the Last Sleater-Kinney Show I’ll Ever Review" and "PJ Harvey Can Get Away With Anything"; second place in Business Feature Reporting for "‘Our Community Is as Big as Where African Americans Live’: The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder at 90"
The categories for the Page One Awards are a bit confusing and overlapping, and when it comes time to submit nominations, we’re never quite sure where our stories fit in. That may explain why somehow this year I entered the “A&E/Culture Criticism/Reviews” category twice, and won both first and second place. Then again, it may not. Like I said, confusing.
To be more specific, my movie reviews won first and my concert reviews placed second. As someone who’s a music writer by trade and occasionally feels a little like an interloper in the film world, this is pretty validating. So if you think I was wrong about 28 Years Later, well, sorry haters. Tell it to that judges!
Then again, these film reviews were about two people I’d thought about plenty over the years: Bob Dylan and Ronald Reagan. I had a lifetime of opinions as well about the two artists whose shows I’d reviewed: Sleater Kinney and P.J. Harvey. If you wanted to get fancy about it, you could call all four of these pieces essays as much as reviews, I guess.
I have a personal connection to the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder. As I discuss in my feature on the paper, its publisher at the time, Wallace “Jack” Jackman, was the first person to give me a job in journalism. So let me dedicate this one to Tracey Williams and everyone over at the Spokesman, past and present, living and dead.
And Finally...
As has happened before, Racket finished second in the Best Website category. So thank you all for reading and supporting the Second Best Website in Minnesota. You could be reading the best but you'll settle for us, and we respect that.
