The piece points to the Guardian's position as one of the few "crusading 'progressive' alt-papers left standing" as the reason for making this years' list. It's an interesting read, as are some of the other ones (The Onion made the list this year as well). It doesn't dig too deeply, but seems like a decent encapsulation of the pub's history -- if you're unfamiliar with the history of the SFBG, this story gives it to you in a neat little package.

If nothing else, here's a classic quote from Brugmann on blogging:

"Every good newspaper man ought to be controversial," the paper's leader declares. Why don't other publishers blog? "Because while they say they want to be close to their readers, they really don't."

Hmm. Wonder who he's calling out there. Any guesses?

Tucker's stories (here are some of the stories we found) followed the Board of Education's vote to do away with the JROTC, outlined their reasoning (encapsulated in one teacher's quote that, "We need to teach a curriculum of peace"), spotlighted some of the affected students, and finally, in the end, got Mayor Gavin's less-than-thrilled reaction to the successful vote, which will phase the program out over two years.

A pretty good sampling of Asimov's stories can be found here.

Other reporters were cited as well -- congratulations to the Chronicle for placing so well in the competitive metro (100,000+ daily circulation) division. Kudos!

So it gives us immense pleasure when we can share a little positive news.

Evidently, there's something called the "Best of the West" Contest for print journalism, an award given yearly by First Amendment Funding Inc. in a variety of categories.

While we can't claim to ever have heard of it before today, we certainly believe that the judges have excellent taste.

The Chron's Don Asmussen has won the cartooning award for this year. Yay! BOTW's site describes Asmussen's cartoons as "fresh and funny with a great sense of the absurd," and we couldn't agree more. He's one of the real bright spots over at our city's paper of record (and he draws a great caricature of Tim Goodman too).

The Chron also made the winners list with a second-place award for its coverage of the Kim Family tragedy; the BOTW folks specifically cited Peter Fimrite's tight writing and Jason Van Derbeken's story of a heroic helicopter pilot as contributing factors.

So, congrats again to the Chronicle writers and Mr. Asmussen!

A treatise on the quality of this magazine is perhaps best left for another day, and for other people to make. After all, what business do we, a ground-floor, citizen-based blog enterprise, have bashing our betters in the antique (i.e., published using "ink") media?

However, we will say this: were we ever to actually want to read 7x7, we would never pay for it. It's free . Free at the Farmer's Market (c'mon, Derrick -- we want to see what SFist in the Kitchen would do with this fresh find). Free at our local YMCA. And, most recently, free in our mailbox.

Yes, folks, it's evidently a magazine reduced to "junk mail" status. Right there with the Ikea and Victoria's Secret catalogues (the difference is we sometimes read the former and will look at the pictures in the latter -- neither of which we've done with 7x7).

So -- is the magazine boosting circulation numbers by giving a ton of product away, maybe in an effort to justify or raise advert rates? Or hoping that once people read it, they'll start subscribing? We could ask, but that would make us too much like legitimate media. We'd rather just ask you to take a poll.

Picture by Jennifer from the State Department -- we cropped ourselves out because, well, we're not as cool as these people.

In other local Ellie Award news, San Francisco Magazine was nominated for an article about the Santa Clara Law School Innocence Project in the public interest article category, but lost to Seymour Hersh's Abu Ghraib coverage in the New Yorker. Eh, we guess there was probably no real surprise in that category, huh?

And finally, you'll all also certainly be shocked to hear that our little site here did not win (and was not even nominated for) the special "general excellence online" award, for "weblogs that have a significant amount of original content." That went to Style.com, of the Conde Nast machine.