U.S. National Magazine Awards finalists announced.

The finalists for the U.S. National Magazine Awards, run by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) have been announced. National Geographic has seven nominations, followed by New York magazine and Bon Appétit with six each. GQ and the New Yorker have five each. Among publishing groups, Condé Nast has the most finalists — 26 — to Hearst Corp.’s nine; Time Inc. also had nine. 

Milton Glaser

Walter Bernard

The May 2 awards gala will include a presentation of the Creative Excellence Award to Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard, whose work as graphic designers has shaped the modern magazine. The Creative Excellence Award was established in 2008 by ASME to recognize writers and artists who have made unique and enduring contributions to magazines.

According to a story in WWD,

Several obscure magazines and some upstarts notched their first appearance at the Ellies, among them: MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History; Byliner, a digital publisher, and Mental Floss, a hybrid humor and topical magazine from Dennis Media. There are also several renamed categories to reflect, for the first time, the inclusion of the digital magazine awards at the primetime ceremony. After much debate, for instance, the profile writing category was dropped, and eventually merged with another category to form “Feature Writing Incorporating Profile Writing.” In that category, GQ received two nominations: one for Karen Russell, the young Pulitzer Prize-nominated novelist, who was nominated for her profile of a one-eyed matador, and a second for Jay Kirk, who wrote about treating burn victims with experimental video games.

The New Yorker, Wired, Texas Monthly and Byliner were the other finalists.

Esquire, whose editor, David Granger, had raised a big stink over the elimination of the profile writing category, was nominated for best in its class — news, sports and entertainment magazines — and for best magazine section, “Man at His Best.” Among the service and fashion titles, the finalists are: Harper’s Bazaar, O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Vogue, and Rodale’s Women’s Health. Bon App was nominated in the lifestyle magazines category alongside House Beautiful, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, and Texas Monthly. Last year, then under editor Richard Just, who was later ousted, the New Republic earned a best of its class nomination in the literary and political magazine category, and it’s repeated the trick again this year, now under editor Franklin Foer. It is up against MIT’s Technology Review, Mother Jones, The Paris Review and Poetry.

Unlike the National Magazine Awards in Canada, the U.S. awards are made to magazines rather than individual writers, artists and photographers. The awards -- nicknamed the "Ellies" -- come with a statue designed by the sculptor Alexander Calder in the form of an elephant.