Online voting for Outside’s Best Town Ever:
Chattanooga 7,434
Tucson, Ariz. 5,925
Charleston, S.C. 2,251
Boulder, Colo. 1,701
Ashland, Ore. 1,154
Burlington, Vt. . 786
Madison, Wis. 750
Portland, Maine 704
Portland, Ore. 685
Santa Fe, N.M. 585
Chattanooga has won the online voting component of Outside magazine’s “Best Town Ever” contest for 2011.
With voting now closed on a Facebook page, Chattanooga beat second-place Tucson, Ariz., by 1,509 votes.
Still, Chattanoogans must wait until early September to learn if the city is the ultimate winner of the contest because there are other elements to the judging.
“The winner won’t be announced until the October issue of Outside magazine hits the newsstands,” Jada Williams, the magazine’s publicist, said in an email Monday.
According to contest rules: “The winning town will be determined through a combination of total votes, overall support as a result of content [such as photos and testimonials] submitted, and creativity.”
“Chattanooga is in a great position right now,” Ryan Krogh, research editor at Outside magazine, said in a telephone interview on Monday. “Chattanooga won the voting hands down.”
Krogh said the magazine’s editors, some of whom are familiar with Chattanooga, will huddle in coming weeks to consider more subjective factors and name an ultimate winner. He said the contest is not a pure matter of voting because of the relative size of the 10 finalist cities.
“We try to even out the playing field for the smaller towns,” he said.
The winning city will be featured on the cover of the magazine and on a segment on Outside Television.
The three-week online contest featured 10 finalist cities from around the United States nominated by the editors of Outside. Chattanooga and Tucson emerged early in the contest as the leading vote-getters.
This is the first time the magazine has used social media to help choose the winner.
Contact Mark Kennedy at 423-757-6645 or mkennedy@timesfreepress.com
Kennedy is the content editor of the Times Free Press Life sections and writes the “Life Stories” column. Previously, he was the first Sunday editor of the Times Free Press. Before Chattanooga’s newspapers were merged in 1999, Kennedy was the coordinating editor of the Chattanooga Times, where he had previously been an education reporter, feature writer and team leader. His first newspaper job was as sports editor of the Cleveland (Tenn.) Daily Banner. Kennedy’s human ...
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It is highly gratifying that Chattanooga won a recent online vote in Outside magazine’s “Best Town Ever” contest.
Chattanooga has won the online voting component of Outside magazine’s “Best Town Ever” contest for 2011.
Chattanooga stands in second place in Outside Magazine’s online contest to find the “Best Town Ever.”
If you belive that all of america is choosing Chattanooga as the best town ever, I have some beach front property in Oklahoma for a good price! There is nothing wrong with being proud of your city but come on? You can run up a vote count easy by voting several times online. Unless you never travel outside Chattanooga (other states), you will not realize how hilarious all this type of stuff is!
Hey kids, breaking news ......chattanooga has just been voted best ever place 4 chiropractors, orthopedic surgeons and psychologists because of injuries created from excessive patting themselves 4 imagined accomplishments . The psychologists say that this tendency to exaggerate is a symptom of an extreme case of collective low self esteem. This being designated a front page story is further evidence.
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