THE "AWARDS WHICH HAVE NEVER BEEN GRANTED TO THE SOURCE" AWARDS: The 2010 National Magazine Award winners have been announced, including Glamour winning the American Society of Magazine first-ever general award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence, New York Magazine again cleaning up with four awards (including its definitive guides to Neapolitan pizza and the circumcision debate, to give some idea of the magazine's breadth), and Atul Gawande deservedly winning for that New Yorker article last summer on that town in Texas with the messed-up health care costs which everyone -- everyone -- seemed to have read.
Frustratingly, the ASME website neither links to the winners nor explains why the other finalists were nominated.
A few thoughts:
ReplyDelete1. Three of my favorites--New York, Texas Monthly, and the Atlantic, all in the "mid-range" category. (And here's the Texas Monthly piece that won Feature Writing, about a high school football player who's paralyzed as a result of a tackle and what happens afterwards.)
2. I love the fact that "Mother Jones" and "Garden and Gun" are nominated in the same category despite (I expect) basically zero overlap in those subscriber bases.
While "The Cost Conundrum" was (as Adam says) both excellent and influential (it seemed like everyone was talking about it here in DC), I would also recommend that folks not ignore Gawande's pseudo-follow-up piece, "Testing, Testing." http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/14/091214fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
ReplyDeleteI am sad that the runner-ups aren't linked, or at least named. I read so much good stuff from the post here last year of the winners.
ReplyDeleteI was glad to hear that the story of Memorial Medical Center won this award (and the Pulitzer!). What an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Glamour? Who was voting, George Costanza?
ReplyDeleteThe Esquire profile of Todd Marinovich is excellent and well worth the read.
Thanks for linking to the Texas Monthly piece, Matt. I just read it and it was really beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAlso glad to see the New York Times Magazine's piece "The Deadly Choices at Memorial" getting noticed. It was really powerful and haunting.
One thing I love about NY Magazine is when they choose to really tackle a topic, they really get into it. The Circumcision piece had maybe three extensive sidebars and they covered the topic from many angles - religion, history, medical, current trends, etc.