The National Magazine Awards, an event that was formerly full of magazine higher-ups, welcomed more junior-level staffers to attend this year—and I got to go. On Thursday night, April 30, 2009, the finalists from the pool of more than 350 print and online magazines that entered gathered at New York City’s swanky Jazz at Lincoln Center to honor the winners. Considered the industry’s top honor, the American Society of Magazine Editors hands out the awards annually; this was its 44th year.
I attended the awards with a small group from Bicycling magazine, where I’m an assistant editor. We were nominated in the Public Interest category for “Broken,” a story about road laws that don’t protect cyclists in bike-car accidents; I had written a series of service sidebars for the package. My coworkers, who had all been to the NMAs in previous years, said when we walked into the Rose Ballroom that a significantly smaller number of people were in attendance than usual. That, of course, is the result of the economy’s effects on the magazine industry. There’s a hefty charge to attend the awards, and some magazines that used to send multiple editors had the budget only to send one or two. The dress code changed too, from black-tie to cocktail attire, and last year’s lavish chocolate-fondue fountain was nowhere to be found.
The industry’s current disorder didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits, though. It seemed like my Bicycling coworkers had collectively worked with at least half the people in the room at different points in their careers, and they spent the reception hugging old friends and catching up on where their careers and lives had taken them. (Here’s proof of how small the magazine industry truly is.) I was thrilled to catch up with the editors of Backpacker, who used to share a floor with Bicycling in Rodale’s Emmaus, Pennsylvania, North Street office before the magazine was sold to Active Interest Media and moved to Boulder, Colorado, two years ago.
Bicycling was up against stiff competition that night—Vanity Fair, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and Mother Jones—so when I heard over the loudspeaker that we were to file into the auditorium for the start of the awards, I reminded myself that I was thrilled to go to the NMAs at all, and that I would have no reason to be disappointed if we didn’t win. Jimmy Fallon presented the night’s first award, which went to my friends at Backpacker for General Excellence Online.
Their winning spree continued, and they walked away with Ellies (they’re called Ellies because Alexander Calder, the sculptor who created the copper stabile award, said it looked like an elephant) in three out of the four categories in which they were nominated. Esquire, The New Yorker, and Wired all took home three Ellies, too. Renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz received the first-ever individual Ellie, presented by Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter, Jan Wenner, and Tina Brown.
But perhaps more notable were the evening’s surprise wins. Bonnier Corporation’s Field & Stream beat out Conde Nast’s Vogue and The New Yorker for General Excellence, 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 circulation, while Reader’s Digest also won for General Excellence, 2,000,000-plus circulation. Automobile earned the Ellie for Columns and Commentary, a category that also included The Nation, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, and The New Republic.
It came time for our award—and we won! Our editor in chief, Loren Mooney, took the stage and quipped, “Bicycling? Really?” I’m biased, but I think her speech was one of the best of the night. She told the audience how “Broken” had been written over the course of two years, and that it was “very expensive” to produce, but that Rodale understood the importance of presenting the issue at hand. I will never forget working on the story; the sidebar series was my first big project when I started at Bicycling as an intern in the summer of 2007. As part of the package, I spoke to the families of 14 cyclists who had died in bicycle-car crashes, and their stories depressed and moved me like nothing else I’ve worked on since.
After the ceremony, we all laughed and hugged and tried to convince ourselves that we’d actually won as we sipped celebratory champagne back in the Rose Ballroom. Loren, who likes to tease me for being the youngest Bicycling staffer, laughed and said, “Don’t get used to this, Mattheis. It’s all downhill from here!” I know she was joking, but I still plan to prove her wrong.
For a full list of winners and finalists, visit ASME.org. (http://www.magazine.org/asme/magazine_awards/nma_winners/index.aspx)
