City Pages nominated for National Association of Black Journalists award

​This brought some smiles to our newsroom: Former City Pages staffer Emily Kaiser's January 2010 cover story about Haze, the forgotten local funk band, has been nominated for an award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

It's an honor to be considered for one of these prestigious Salute to Excellence awards; we're also proud that the other two entries in the news feature category come from Village Voice Media publications.

Kaiser's story begins with an old vinyl LP being saved from the trash outside Cheapo by KMSU disc jockey Shelley Pierce, and traces Pierce's quest to track down the band behind her "Mystery Record." Along the way, the story takes readers through the birth of Haze, its awesome bellbottoms and broken dreams, dissolution and eventual resurrection.

You can read the story, check out the slideshows, and hear some Haze by clicking here.

Kaiser is now with the Washington, D.C. City Paper. Like her, we'll have to wait until the NABJ's annual convention in August to find out whether the story takes first place.