American magazine awards had some surprises

For the first time, Field & Stream magazine and Reader's Digest won awards for general editorial excellence at the U.S. national magazine awards last night (the "Ellies"*). The awards are presented by the American Society of Magazine Edtiors.

Reader's Digest won in the circulation-ranked general excellence in the >2 million category, on a night when it did much better than usual; Field & Stream somewhat surprisingly besting the New Yorker in the 1 million - 2 million category. Perhaps not coincidentally, both RD and F&S have been operating under new editors. Other general excellence winners were:

• Wired (500,000 to 1,000,000 circulation)
  
• Texas Monthly for General Excellence (250,000 to 500,000 circulation)
• Foreign Policy for General Excellence (100,000 to 250,000 circulation)
• Print for General Excellence (under 100,000 circulation)

Full list of winners and finalists.

Folio: magazine reported that the awards were a somewhat more subdued affair than in years previous. However, it also reported that photographer Annie Liebowitz was singularly honoured.

Four of the magazine industry’s iconic editors—Tina Brown, Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner, Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter and Vogue’s Anna Wintour—presented photographer Annie Leibovitz with a general excellence Ellie—the first ever to be awarded to an individual, not a magazine.

The New York Times rather archly reported that winning an award didn't necessarily equate with business success (pot=kettle=black).

While the awards give a magazine bragging rights, they don’t always correlate to advertising sales. General excellence honorees’ ad pages fell by about one-third in the first quarter of this year, according to Publishers Information Bureau data.

GQ and The New Yorker had the highest number of nominations but didn’t dominate the awards. GQ, nominated for eight awards, won only one, for photography. The New Yorker, nominated for 10, won three: reviews and criticism by James Wood, fiction and photo portfolio.

Backpacker.com and Nymag.com won general excellence awards for online, and Backpacker.com and the Web site of AARP The Magazine were honored for their interactive features.

*Winning magazines receive an "Ellie" -- a stylized elephant stabile by the sculptor Alexander Calder.