NYTimes.com coverage of the Ellies

May 4, 2000

Levity Prevails as Awards Are Handed to Magazines

By ALEX KUCZYNSKI

EW YORK -- The last year has not been the smoothest for the magazine industry. Publishers have been concerned that newsstand consolidation would slow sales. The Postal Service has proposed a significant increase in magazine mailing rates. Life, Mirabella and New Woman were closed. Details is on hiatus. The future of some notable new magazines -- Talk; O: The Oprah Magazine; and Real Simple -- is not yet clear.
So, the tone could have been one of uncertainty at the National Magazine Awards presentation Wednesday. Instead, the ceremony, which held a few surprises, sounded more like an evening of stand-up comedy.
"I think I'm having a bad hair day," Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, said as he accepted the magazine's award for reporting, for two articles about the war in Kosovo.
After Gene Shalit, the NBC film critic, gave the induction speech for the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame, Carter stood again, to receive the award for photography, and dead-panned: "Actually, I realized my bad hair day was not so bad when Gene Shalit came up."
Some 1,400 guests were on hand at the Waldorf-Astoria for the awards luncheon, sponsored by the magazine society and administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
George E. Curry, the editor in chief of Emerge magazine, became the first African-American elected as president of the society.
John Mack Carter of Hearst Magazines, who has served as editor in chief of McCall's, Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping in his five-decade career, was inducted into the society's Hall of Fame. In a brief speech listing the principles that have guided his career, Carter drew applause with his admonitions to "work for a shop where editorial comes first" and "hug your staff."
When William L. Allen, the editor in chief of National Geographic, accepted the award for general excellence, he said: "I would hug my staff, but our legal department has advised me not to."
Among the surprises was Sports Illustrated, which further built its reputation as a magazine for literature and reporting by beating out The New Yorker and Esquire for the award for feature writing, and by beating out Esquire and The Atlantic Monthly for profiles, a new category this year. PC Computing faced its formidable competition -- Esquire, Consumer Reports, Redbook and Smart Money -- and won the award for personal service.
The New Yorker, nominated for 11 awards, won 3. Esquire was nominated for 5 awards and won 1, for reviews and criticism.
In another new category introduced by the magazine society this year, essays, The Sciences magazine won for an essay about the cathedral clock in Strasbourg, France.
Following is a list of the National Magazine Award winners:

General excellence, over 1,000,000: National Geographic.
General excellence, 400,000 to 1,000,000: The New Yorker.
General excellence, 100,000 to 400,000: Saveur.
General excellence, under 100,000: Nest.
Personal service: PC Computing, for "Small-Business Secret Weapons" by Bonny L. Georgia, in three parts.
Special interest: I.D. Magazine, for "Loving Las Vegas."
Reporting: Vanity Fair, for "Madness Visible" by Janine di Giovanni and "The Forensics of War" by Sebastian Junger.
Feature writing: Sports Illustrated, "Moment of Truth" by Gary Smith.
Profiles: Sports Illustrated, "The Ring Leader" by Frank Deford.
Public interest: The New Yorker, "The Demon in the Freezer" by Richard Preston.
Design: Fast Co.
Photography: Vanity Fair.
Fiction: The New Yorker, for stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders and Robert Stone.
Essays: The Sciences, for "Clock of Ages" by Brian Hayes.
Reviews and criticism: Esquire, for three columns by Tom Carson.
General excellence in new media: Business Week Online.

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