National Geographic wins top magazine award

The US's 2011 National Magazine Awards presented the winners on May 10 in New York City with
National Geographic magazine taking the top prize, Magazine of the Year, and edging out other nominees
The Atlantic,
Backpacker,
Foreign Policy and
Wired.

The trophy, known as the Ellie - for the Alexander Calder stabile "Elephant" - is a small- scale reproduction that is given to award winners.

Other top publications include New York and Los Angeles magazines, and the New York Times Magazine, which each received two awards. The New Yorker, which led with nine nominations, took only one for Public Interest.

Other winners of note included Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens for Columns and Commentary category for a series on his battle with cancer diagnosed after his memoir Hitch-22 was released.

GQ won Overall Design, Men's Health won in the ‘Personal Service' category and Women's Health won in the 'Fashion, Service, and Lifestyle' category over stalwarts Vogue and W, though W did take the Print Photography award.

The Reporting award went to Harper's, Scientific American won General Excellence, for Finance, Technology and Lifestyle Magazines, and The Paris Review for Essays & Criticism.

Legendary novelist and nonfiction writer Tom Wolfe was presented with the Creative Excellence Award by Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner. On accepting the honor, he stated that "in the second half of the 20th century, the great literature has been non-fiction, and so much of that has grown out of magazines."

Hosted by the American Society of Magazine Editors, the 54 publications up for prizes included weeklies, biweeklies and monthlies for 21 categories including fiction, feature writing and profiles, and General Excellence from Fashion to Food, Travel and Sports.

http://www.magazine.org/asme/magazine_awards/

RC