The announcement of the creation of the Flat Earth Award, which took place at the "What Works? New Strategies for a Melting Planet" conference at Middlebury on Jan. 25-27, is the subject of the lead article in the Feb. 4 edition of AlterNet, which you can see at www.alternet.org.   News of the award was also picked up by Collegenews.org, the Web site of the Annapolis Group, a nonprofit alliance of independent liberal arts colleges, at <http://www.collegenews.org/x4095.xml>, and author and writer Chris Mooney posted an item Friday, Jan. 28, about the award on his blog, with a link to the press release on the Middlebury site, at <http://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp>.