Finally, just a tiny bit of good journalism news for Tucson.

The Tucson Weekly won three awards in the 2011 Altweekly Awards. The winners of the awards, sponsored by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), were announced this afternoon at the 2011 AAN Annual Convention in New Orleans.

The Weekly won top honors in the Illustration category (circulation under 50,000) for "The Nine Types of Arizona Politicians," by Lloyd Dangle and Jim Nintzel (June 3, 2010).

Margaret Regan earned her fourth Altweekly Award since 2003, nabbing second place for Arts Criticism (circulation under 50,000), for "The Whole Picture" (Feb. 4, 2010), "Tile Roofs and Borrowed Styles" (July 15, 2010) and "Deposited by Angels" (Oct. 28, 2010).

Finally, the Weekly and the UA School of Journalism earned third place in the Innovation/Format Buster category for the student-journalism project "Beyond the Border," much of which ran in the Dec. 2, 2010 issue online and in print.

Creative Loafing (Atlanta), Miami New Times, Nashville Scene and The Village Voice won the most first-place awards, each taking home three.