Beer Radar

Word arrived today that the Brewers Association has decided to cancel its annual Michael Jackson Beer Journalism awards program this year. The 5-year-old program was named in honor of the Beer Hunter following his unexpected death in 2007.

The award, sponsored over the years by Sam Adams and Rogue, was presented annually to three writers during the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.

Julia Herz, the B.A.’s craft beer program director, explained, “After 5 years it had grown to a level that was difficult to execute as the number of entries was ever increasing…”

Here’s a 2008 piece from Andy Crouch that provides some excellent background - and concerns  - about the awards.

Just for the sake of posterity (and as a shout-out to All About Magazine, which dominated), here’s the full list of winners. (Philly writers bfc.)

2004

• James P. DeWan, Chicago Tribune
• Lisa Morrison, Internet Broadcast Systems network
• Stan Hieronymus, All About Beer magazine
• Michael Jackson, Distinguished Service Award

2005

• Ken Wells, Wall Street Journal
• Sandy Riesgraf and Mike Reidel, Fox 13 News, Salt Lake City.
• Fred Eckhardt, All About Beer magazine

2006

• Joe Sixpack, Philadelphia Daily News
• Carolyn Smagalski, BellaOnline
• Tony Galea, Yankee Brew News

2007

• Marnie Old, Santé magazine
• Roger Sherman and Jesse Sweet, Florentine Films
• Julie Johnson Bradford, All About Beer magazine

2008

• Lew Bryson, All About Beer magazine
• Mark Marion, ??
• Adem Tepedelen, Imbibe magazine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Beer etc., GABF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.