Creative Loafing - Charlotte won a first-place AltWeekly Award, presented at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual convention in San Diego on Friday, June 17. "Flawed Priorities," a CL cover story by Tara Servatius, originally published April 28, 2004, won the first place prize in the Education category for newspapers with circulation over 50,000. The awards were given to reward the best work published by the weekly alternative press in 2004. Servatius' story revealed that even though the school system had made physical improvements in schools in lower income areas, it had failed to address (or even notice) the fact that students in those schools were being taught by teachers who, overall, had much less experience and know-how than the teachers in higher income schools. The story led to the issue finally being addressed by area mainstream media and the school system. Creative Loafing in Atlanta won three AltWeekly Awards: First Place for Best Feature Story to CL-Atl news editor Mara Shalhoup; Second Place for Long Form News Story and Honorable Mention for Arts Feature, both by Steve Fennessy.