The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies is out with their 2006 AltWeekly Award Winners.

In many cases, these winners were for news, features and photo spreads that for whatever reason(s) the leading metro newspaper in that market seemed to lack the commitment to tackle.

Kudo for Willamette Week, winner for Investigative Reporting among weeklies with regular circulation of 50,000 or more copies.

Nigel Jaquiss- who has already won a Pulitzer- captured First Place for his series on Portland General Electric, which finally is free of the owned-by-Enron yoke (but still deserving of a watchful eye).

Nigel’s winning package includes the pieces: “The PGE Papers“; “Generating Spin“; “The Electric Marionettes“; “PGE’s Windfall“; “Enron’s Tax,” “The New Deal,” “Pants on Fire,” “PGE’s Taxing Story.”

Great going, Nigel. Willy Week:: do your best to hold on to this guy.

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