Best of Nashville 2009: Politics and Media

Best Radio Voice:
Fred Buc, Radio Lightning
Most on-air voices these days are loud and obnoxious, assaulting our ears with lame jokes and sexual innuendo only a junior high schooler would enjoy. That's why Lightning 100's Fred Buc wonderfully bucks the trend. With his conversational calm and steady tongue, Buc skips all the nonsense, studio sound effects and self-aggrandizing lip and just...well, talks to us. As host of the Saturday-morning staple Retro Lightning, he draws attention to himself only with what he's saying, not how he's saying it—and when he rattles off the top TV shows of 1978, listeners amazingly feel like they've learned something. When was the last time you felt that way after listening to Bob & Tom? VINCENT TROIA

Best Local Country Music Blogger:
Jim Malec, The9513.com
At the country music website The9513.com, Malec writes so well you don't know whether to be delighted just to read him or jealous that you don't have that kind of talent. He's rough on country music in the way that only a person who loves and thinks deeply about an art form can be. He's also not afraid to sit down and interview local villain John Rich without backtracking from the tough things he's said about the Scene's favorite celebrity target. Malec is headed to the Czech Republic for a bit, so look for him next year to be named Prague's best local country music blogger. Our loss. BETSY PHILLIPS

Best Local Twitter Feed (Print):
Michael Cass, The Tennessean
Michael Cass covers Metro Nashville for the morning daily. He can also be found on Twitter @tnmetro. While Twitter is mostly the social-networking equivalent of a smoke break for people who get it (and inexplicable to those who don't), Cass has managed to strike the right tone of authoritative and informative. Whatever's going on in Metro, Cass is usually keeping his followers abreast of it in real time. The thing Cass does best, though, is to take the concerns of his Twitter followers directly to the people he can access that regular Joes can't. He's not just reporting, he's listening to—and asking questions for—his readers. BETSY PHILLIPS

Best Local Twitter Feed (TV):
Christine Maddela, WKRN
While she has won her share of awards for her in-depth, multi-part series on subjects such as the Tennessee Minuteman, what the weekend anchor and reporter is best known for online is her use of Twitter. Sure, everyone has a Twitter account these days—but have they ever broken one of the city's biggest stories with it? Maddela has. While every news organization in town was scrambling get news of Steve McNair's death to their various platforms, Maddela was widely credited with being first—on Twitter. It's not all about serious journalism, though. Maddela tweets about her dogs, her trainer, she even tweets during the newscast—just because she can. We've never seen the camera catch her midtweet. But we keep watching—and waiting. A.C. KLEINHEIDER

Best Show of Political Hardball:
Rep. Jimmy Naifeh
When the Democrats went looking for that final vote to keep Naifeh with his hand on the speaker’s gavel, they came up empty. But they did find a solution that would at least keep Jason Mumpower’s hand off it. Whoever truly first proposed the idea, we’ll never really know. But whether it was Kent Williams who made the counteroffer the Democrats couldn’t refuse, or whether it was Naifeh who cooked up the nuclear option just to incinerate the Republicans’ dreams of a conservative speaker, the move was hardball at its hardest. Some say Jason Mumpower is still reeling nearly a year later from the beanball pitch Naifeh aimed at his head. A.C. KLEINHEIDER

Best Local Women's Health Blog:
Women's Health News
Okay, Rachel Walden may have the only local women's health blog, but we shouldn't hold the lack of competition against her. At Women's Health News (womenshealthnews.wordpress.com), you can read tales of woe about women who have lost Tampons, you can keep track of the latest anti-women bills in the state legislature, and you can get good and entertaining information about women's health. We're not the only ones to notice how great Walden is. After a brief stint as a guest blogger at Our Bodies, Ourselves, they asked her to come on as an official co-blogger. BETSY PHILLIPS

Best Roman A Clef Blog:
Sorry for Partyin'
Partying is a universal theme, "the ultimate excuse for bad behavior," says Kelli Craig. The stylist, boutique proprietor, sometime standup comedian and former Raconteurs life partner started a blog in July (preludetosuicide.blogspot.com), as a companion piece to an as-yet-unpublished book of short stories. Each post details what she calls "adventures," good-time shenanigans that those involved "regretted, but not too much." They read like a cross between literature and blind gossip items, while addressing tricky etiquette questions: What to do after you've lured a hot busboy to your loft for a nonexistent cocaine party? How do you figure out if your convenience-store clerk is a narc? Fake guest bloggers and pseudonyms like "Rat Tail" abound, but Craig insists that the stories are 90 percent factual. EMILY BARTLETT HINES