The Hook was a weekly newspaper published in Charlottesville, Virginia founded in 2002 by a number of former employees of another Charlottesville weekly, C-ville Weekly, including its co-founder and editor Hawes Spencer.
In June 2022, the Hook’s website, home to an archive of more than 22,000 stories, suddenly disappeared. Former Hook reporters learned that the website had been sold to a mysterious buyer who apparently had no interest in maintaining the archive. They suspected that someone paid to kill it. Their investigation was featured in this Washington Post story*. *
For a short time, the Hook website was [restored by…
The Hook was a weekly newspaper published in Charlottesville, Virginia founded in 2002 by a number of former employees of another Charlottesville weekly, C-ville Weekly, including its co-founder and editor Hawes Spencer.
In June 2022, the Hook’s website, home to an archive of more than 22,000 stories, suddenly disappeared. Former Hook reporters learned that the website had been sold to a mysterious buyer who apparently had no interest in maintaining the archive. They suspected that someone paid to kill it. Their investigation was featured in this Washington Post story*. *
For a short time, the Hook website was restored by an anonymous benefactor with the domain extension .net, but eventually that website also disappeared.
Thanks to the Internet Archive, links to the Hook’s stories still exist, but they are unsearchable. This website is an attempt to create a searchable archive for those stories.
The Award-winning Hook
In 2013, just months before its publishers would close the paper, the Hook won the state’s top journalism award for its team coverage of the attempted ouster of UVA President Teresa Sullivan. It was the third time the Hook won the coveted prize for Journalistic Integrity and Community Service, given at the time to only two newspapers every year at the Virginia Press Association’s annual award ceremony.
“Aggressive inquisitiveness beyond a daily’s or even a weekly’s normal scope produced unusual facets of the story that went uncovered by other news outlets," said the judge’s statement. "This includes pursuit of angles that, while risky, opened the aperture for the audience."
In 2006, the Hook won the top prize for a package of unrelated stories, including the "12-step" rape apology case, the shooting of a pet cat, and for the coverage, penned mostly by Lisa Provence, of the so-called "school bombing plot," which a VPA judge lauded as our "shining crown jewel."
In 2008, the top award came as the result of our coverage of the controversial water proposal plan, penned mostly by former *Hook *editor and founder Hawes Spencer.
The Hook staff won a total of 149 VPA awards.