And in perhaps my most-favoritest bit of bloggery regarding the Convention, Hank Sims of the North Coast Journal (Humboldt County, CA) blogs the paper’s acceptance to the illustrious organization that is AAN:

“Yours truly was left to hold down the fort last week while the rest of the staff decamped to Portland for days of drunken revelry with our peers from across North America. So when I got the telephone call Saturday evening, I was inclined to take the news with several grains of salt — in other words, in much the same way that the colleague slurring words into my ear had already taken several margaritas.

But by Monday morning the bigwigs in Portland* had evidently sobered up enough to issue a press release, and lo! It was all true. The North Coast Journal had been deemed worthy of admission into the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, journalism’s most exclusive fraternity. Nineteen papers applied this year; only five were accepted. We made it through on the first round, but we were very nearly done in by the sickly remnants of our public service mission. Here’s what the AAN membership committee had to say about the Journal: “[I]t’s a little too rah-rah — take, for example, the story about the local food co-op and how wonderful it is for the community.”

Hey, it was a slow news week! Luckily it appears that our team’s heroic imbibery in Portland more than made up for our sometimes schmaltzy, substandard copy. But consider us duly chastised. I piss on the Co-op.”

* Technically, we keep our large hairpieces at the AAN office in downtown DC.