National Magazine Awards nominations have been released

[This post has been updated]The three finalists for the coveted award Magazine of the Year in this year's 34th annual national magazine awards are Canada's History, Cottage Life and MoneySense. Finalists for the awards were announced today.

For the best new creative talent award, the nominees are:

• Marit Mitchell "This Little Piggy Went To Market", Maisonneuve
• Mark Peckmezian "A Man Called Cope", Report on Business
• Matthieu Aikins "Last Stand in Kandahar", The Walrus

Magazine of the year (digital) nominees re:

• Besthealthmag.ca
• CanadianLiving.com
• Enroute.aircanada.com
• Fashionmagazine.com
• Macleans.ca
• Openfile.ca
• Readersdigest.ca
• Sparksheet.com
• Torontolife.com
• Torontoist.com

A complete list of finalists is available here.

There were nearly 2,000 individual entries nationwide; 379 submissions from 88 different Canadian publications for awards in 43 written, visual, integrated and online categories, reviewed by more than 208 volunteer judges. The Gold, Silver and Honourable Mention awards will be announced in Toronto on June 10, at the 34th annual National Magazine Awards gala, presented by CDS Global.

Seven French-language publications garnered 39 nominations, with L'actualité (22), Châtelaine (6) and Quebec science (5).

Leading the nominations were:

• The Walrus (35)
• Report in Business (31)
• Toronto Life (30)
• L'actualité (22)
• explore (18)
• Maisonneuve (16)
• Maclean's (13)
• enRoute (12)
• Swerve (10)
• Canadian Geographic (9)
• Cottage Life (9)
• Chatelaine (9)

First-time nominated magazines this year include Eye Weekly, Maison & Demeure, The Feathertale Review, Open File, Sparksheet, Boulderpavement, CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, Corporate Knights, Garden Making, Hardly Magazine, International Architecture & Design, Legion, Moi & cie,Musicworks, Western Living Condo, and Your Business.

Several writers are nominated multiple times.

• J.B. MacKinnon received four nominations, each for different magazines. 
• Alison Motluck's article "The Human Egg Trade" for The Walrus is nominated in three categories:Investigative Reporting, Politics & Public Interest, and Health & Medicine.
• Valérie Borde garnered three nominations for her work in L'actualité; 
• Ian Merringer is nominated three times for explore magazine. 
• Robert Hough has three nominations for Toronto Life. 
• D.W. Wilson received three nominations in the Fiction category for work in different magazines. 
• TyeeBridge also received three nominations for writing in Swerve and Vancouver Magazine.

Among visual nominations

• Dominic Macri of Report on Business is nominated a total of six times for Art Direction for a Single Article and Art Direction for an Entire Issue. 
• Photographer Donald Weber received three nominations in the category Photojournalism and Photo Essay, each for work in different magazines (The Walrus, Canadian Art, and Chatelaine).

[We quote, with a blush, from the NMAF's release:]

The NMAF's most prestigious individual prize since its inception in 1990 is The Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement. This year, the NMAF is honoured to name D.B. Scott as the recipient for his exceptional contributions to the Canadian magazine community. He is currently the president of Impresa Communications Ltd, a consulting firm specializing in Canadian magazine and publishing companies and presides over the industry's most widely read and go-to blog, Canadian Magazines. In calling for his nomination as this year's Outstanding Achievement recipient, John Macfarlane, editor and co-publisher of The Walrus called D.B.'s blog a "public square" and noted, "when [D.B] chooses to mount his soapbox, he is invariably informed, fair-minded and wise." Read more about D.B. Scott and the Outstanding Achievement Award at www.magazine-awards.com

The foundation's release also said

On April 6, 2011, a list suggesting possible names of nominees was made public as a result of a system error that dynamically drew nominations from the submissions and judging database. The NMAF sincerely regrets this unfortunate incident and any confusion caused to individuals who were named on that list but are not nominees for this year's awards.

The National Magazine Awards Foundation (NMAF) is a non-profit organization (disclosure: I was a board member for several years and the president in 1991) that promotes excellence in Canadian magazine journalism through the judging and awarding of over 2000 submissions from across the country. The NMAF recognizes the outstanding efforts of more written and visual artists than any comparable organization on the continent, and is supported in part bythe Government of Canada (through the Canada Magazine Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage.)