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Independent Weekly

The January 24, 2007 front page of Independent Weekly
Type	Alternative weekly
Format	Tabloid
Owner	Independent
Publisher	Sioux Watson
Editor	Lisa Sorg
Founded	1983
Headquarters	302 E. Pettigrew St. Suite 3A Durham, NC 27701 United States
Circulation	49,217[1]
Official website	indyweek.com

Independent Weekly is a tabloid-format alternative weekly published in Durham, North Carolina and is distributed throughout the Raleigh-Durham area. Founded in 1983, it has a liberal political perspective, like many alt weeklies.

Among alternative weeklies, The Independent Weekly has a national reputation for investigative and enterprise journalism. The Columbia Journalism Review has cited the newspaper for its "spine of steel."

The Independent has recently published articles on the expansion of the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant operated by Progress Energy on topics such as safety, emissions, and storage of spent radioactive material that have largely gone unreported in other local media.

Several years ago, the Independent acquired the other major weekly in the area, Spectator, which was based in Raleigh and was well-known for its coverage of the arts; the name lives on as the name of the Independent Weekly's arts calendar.

Controversy

The Independent took a fervent pro-prosecution stance during the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case.^[2]

Awards

The Independent's reporters have won most of the major national investigative awards, including the George Polk Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Green Eyeshade Award for the South's best journalism and the Baltimore Sun's H.L. Mencken Writing Award. The most recent national accolade was the 2007 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism for the cover story "Dreams Deferred" (8/2/06 issue).

External links

• The Independent Weekly's Website