KRW trade magazine awards will go ahead in 2010

[This post has been updated]There will be an awards program for Canadian business-to-business and trade magazines in 2010.

The Kenneth R. Wilson Awards (KRWs), owned by Canadian Business Press CBP),  were not included in a recent announcement that its MagsU conference was being discontinued and that its professional development offerings would be done in partnership with the MagNet consortium. (There had been considerable concern about whether the b2b awards would be put on hiatus for a year or held at all, given that support for them had been in decline in recent years.)

Now it has been agreed by the CBP board to outsource the management of the awards to Gould & Associates; Barbara Gould manages the consumer-based National Magazine Awards program. The KRWs will be in the same week as the MagNet conference in June. Some of the larger b2b publishers say they will help support the awards program under this new arrangement.

[Update: A joint press release has now been published providing detail about the arrangement reported above. It says, in part:

The Canadian Business Press (CBP) and Magazines Canada will cooperate in managing the June 2010 Kenneth R. Wilson Awards, the associations have announced. The goal is to re-engineer the KRW awards as a national, bilingual and comprehensive celebration of the excellence in Canadian business to business publishing.

A governing committee with two co-chairs--one from Magazines Canada and one from the Canadian Business Press--will guide the KRW awards process. Co-chairs John Kerr of CBP and John Milne (Rogers) of Magazines Canada will assist the firm contracted to manage the awards, Barbara Gould & Associates. The co-chairs will be active in identifying and recruiting committee members who will focus on the best interests of the KRW awards as the Canadian magazine industry's premier celebration of excellence in the vital B2B sector. The committee will be comprised of leading members of the Canadian business media industry and will not necessarily be members of either the CBP or Magazines Canada.]