National Magazine Digital Media Awards: Separate but Equal?

Last October when the American Society of Magazine Editors decided to include 12 new digital awards--for the first time ever--to their National Magazine awards categories we assumed they were adding the categories to the prestigious industry awards ceremony slated for April 22. Well, you know what happens when you assume.

So Yesterday we were surprised when ASME announced the winners of the National Magazine Awards for Digital Media at a separate event. We wondered why ASME separated the awards into the two categories in the first place. Does it really matter if editorial excellence is achieved in a print magazine or on a blog? Is there really a difference (besides the medium) between journalism and digital journalism? For us, the answer is no.

For more clarity on the situation, we examined the digital award categories. While some of them reflect those of the print award categories including general editorial achievement, design and photography, others are interactive digital/online categories like mobile media, video, podcast and interactive tools.

The categories we find the most interesting are blogging, which ASME defines as "online reporting, commentary and criticism in the form of a blog" and Community, which ASME describes as "honors the use of proprietary content, interactive technology and social media to establish and sustain user communities." One award for journalism...the other for use of journalism? What?

Just like the print (real?) National Magazine awards, New York magazine and National Geographic were the big winners announced. Some other award winners were Billboard.com, Foreign Policy, Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, Virginia Quarterly Review and three online-only publications: Epicurious, Tablet Magazine and Yale Environment 360.

Of the 37 magazine websites and online-only magazines that were nominated only six of them (Epicurious, The Daily Beast, LIFE.com, Slate, Tablet Magazine and Yale Environment 360) are online-only. Still, only three of those--Epicurious, Tablet Magazine and Yale Environment 360--took home awards.

What do you think? Should the digital media awards be separated or included in one awards ceremony?



 

Comments

[Sid Holt]

What do I think? I think you should work on your reporting skills. If you were "surprised" when the awards were presented at the Digital Ellies lunch yesterday (and not at the Ellies event in April), then it's because you didn't read the announcement when the awards were launched in October, didn't look at the Call for Entries when it was published a month later, didn't read the announcement when the finalists were decided in February--in other words, every time it was announced that the Digital Media Awards would be presented on March 18 and the traditional awards on April 22. As for your wondering why there were two separate events, I would have been happy to explain it to you just as I explained it to the New York Times, Ad Age, Mediaweek and countless other publications. ASME decided to host two events because we wanted to make sure that the Digital Media Awards were not overshadowed by the long-established print awards; because we wanted to give digital journalists an opportunity to celebrate as a community (and that is exactly what happened yesterday); and because it was impossible to present 35 awards at one event--or perhaps you attend a lot of four-hour awards programs. We could have split the awards into two separate but unequal events--lumping digital and traditional categories together--but I for one was uninterested in deciding which awards were of lesser importance, so we simply and logically created a second event. As for your plaintive cry "One award for journalism . . . the other for use of journalism? What?"--next time, pick up the phone. Or e-mail. I'm easy to get hold of. The National Magazine Awards honor magazine making. The award is presented to the editor on behalf of the magazine. The award isn't presented to the blogger, but to the publication. In the case of the Community award, the Ellie is presented to the publication for what editors do--yes, for the "use of journalism." I'm sorry you didn't like the winners. I guess the fact that three online-only magazines won 25 percent of the awards, besting many well-known, well-financed publications, wasn't impressive enough. But that's your opinion, not an under-reported conclusion.

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I think it should be definitely separated, it is something completely different and the awards are not given in a fair way when the difference between competitors are so big. It is hard to choose the best ones.