KRW b2b awards are playing 2nd fiddle, says publisher, and he's boycotting them

Rumblings of discontent among people in the Canadian business and trade press about  this year's Kenneth R. Wilson Awards have now bubbled to the surface with the wide circulation of an e-mail by Jim Glionna, the president of Newcom Business Media Inc.who says he's boycotting the event.Newcom publishes Today's Trucking, Canadian Technician, Truck & Trailer, Transport Routier and Plumbing & HVAC.  

The KRWs have been a standalone event celebrating excellence in business-to-business publishing until this year when, for the first time, the two events are being held on the same evening. The KRWs are being held in the late afternoon, then share a reception before the National Magazine Awards in the evening.

Here's the text of Glionna's e-mail which has been sent to a large number of people in both business and consumer publishing:

Dear Publishers and Editors:

I am quite concerned and upset by the way in which KRW Awards are being presented this year.

Whether intended or not, the optics are not good.

The KRW Awards for excellence in B2B journalism are clearly playing second fiddle to the National Magazine Awards. Great journalism should neither be judged on the target audience it serves nor by the amount of revenue generated by the magazine in which it appears. Great journalism is great journalism… period!

For the first time in 18 years I will not be attending the 2012 KRW Awards presentation. Nor will any of our editors and publishers be attending.

My protest does not end here. I intend to do whatever I can to change the current situation. In all fairness B2B writers, publishers, and designers deserve to have their best work portrayed as being just as good as their colleagues who toil in the popular press. 

If anyone would like to assist me in this effort, I’ll take all the help I can get.

Yours truly, Jim Glionna

The background to these developments is complicated and is best followed by reading related posts from the past few years:

• Canadian Business Press to become a foundation, concentrating on awards program
• Magazines Canada grows by 45 new member magazines, including two b2b groups
• Revised b2b awards to have "magazine of the year" and internet categories for first time
• KRW trade magazine awards will go ahead in 2010
• Canadian Business Press discontinues MagsU, becomes a partner in MagNet
• Canadian Business Press buys the Magazines University name
• Magazines Canada ranks swell by 37 titles, including Rogers stable of b2b titles
• Rogers trade books decline to enter KRWs
• Rogers pullout costs CBP 20% of membership revenue
• Rogers b-to-b titles pull out of Canadian Business Press