For nearly two decades, Best American Magazine Writing has been bringing together some of the best journalism of the previous year as chosen by the judges of the National Magazine Awards. (Not all the best journalism, of course, if for no other reason than the winner of, say, the Video award is impossible to translate into print—more’s the pity, since this year’s winner, Vice News’s “Selfie Soldiers: Russia’s Army Checks In to Ukraine” is the best kind of magazine journalism—informative, entertaining, and surprising all at once.)
This edition of BAMW is, however, unlike any other. Seven of the seventeen pieces in this anthology first appeared online, and several of the others were parts of multiplatform packages. In fact, six of the twenty-one National Magazine Award winners this year were originally published online. In one of the oldest categories—Public Interest—four of the five finalists were digital only, and the fifth combined one print piece and two online pieces (that print piece—Meaghan Winters’s Cosmopolitan story “‘Pregnant? Scared? Need Options? Too Bad’”—is included here).
You may think this means…wait for it…print is dead. Which somehow means that magazines are dead. Far from it. The business of magazines is changing as it has been changing since long before the first National Magazine Award winner, Look, vanished in 1971, but as the pieces in this anthology demonstrate, magazine journalism has never been stronger. And whether it appears in print or online, as video or social media, magazine journalism plays an increasingly important role in American society, explaining us to ourselves as no other medium can.
The names, of course, are changing as well—and always will. Back in 1971, as Look teetered on the brink, a four-year-old magazine called Rolling Stone won its first National Magazine Award for its coverage of the Altamont festival and the Manson family. The four other winners that year were, however, titles as familiar today as they were then: The Atlantic, Esquire, The Nation, and Vogue. So, too, this edition of BAMW includes articles from The New Yorker, Esquire, and ESPN the Magazine alongside pieces from BuzzFeed, Matter, and The Intercept.
Even the way we talk about the awards is changing. We now call them the National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media and often refer to them as the Ellies, for the bronze replica of the Alexander Calder stabile Elephant that is given to each winner (the original has its own office at ASME headquarters in New York). But in many other ways the awards remain the same. They are still chosen by leading editors, graphic designers, and photo editors; still presented at an annual gala attended by hundreds of editors and publishers; still celebrate stories that are vigorously reported, elegantly written, lavishly illustrated.
This year 282 media organizations participated in the Ellies, submitting 1,590 print and digital entries, far more than any comparable competition. In January of this year 299 magazine journalists and educators—many of them traveling on their own dime—gathered at Columbia University in the City of New York to choose the finalists and winners. Each of the judges arrived at Columbia after spending the previous weeks reading or viewing entries in one of the twenty-one categories, sometimes interrupting holiday celebrations to ensure that each entry received the attention it deserved.
The judges chose five finalists in each category except Reporting and Feature Writing, two categories in which the number of entries well exceeds one hundred. Sequestered together for two days, the judges then chose the winners. Ten days later the judges’ decisions were ratified by the National Magazine Awards Board, a committee composed of veteran judges and other magazine-industry leaders. One week later the finalists were announced in what has become an annual rite of its own—the El-lies Twittercast. (Follow @asme1963 if you want to be part of the, er, fun in 2017.)
Only three weeks later the winners were announced at “the magazine Oscars,” the annual Ellies gala, hosted by Tamron Hall, national correspondent for NBC News and day-side anchor for MSNBC. Some of the finalists and winners had been published only weeks before being honored at the gala—testament in its own way to the timeliness that distinguishes magazine journalism.
The 2016 gala also included the presentation of the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame Award to Gayle Goodson Butler, the former editor in chief of one of the most widely read magazines in America, Better Homes and Gardens. In receiving this recognition from her colleagues, Butler joined a distinguished group of editors that already includes Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, and Martha Stewart, as well as such legendary figures as Helen Gurley Brown, Clay Felker, and Richard B. Stolley.
The members of ASME owe both Tamron Hall and Gayle Butler our thanks for joining us at the 2016 gala, but there are hundreds of others who also deserve our gratitude for making the Ellies a success. All of the judges should be acknowledged for taking time away from their increasingly complex responsibilities as editorial leaders to ensure that the best magazine work published in America receives the recognition it rightfully is owed. A complete list of the judges and judging leaders is posted on the ASME website.
Also deserving of thanks is the ASME board of directors, especially the 2014–2016 president of ASME, Mark Jannot, who, when he was not supervising the running of the Ellies, served as vice president of content for the National Audubon Society. Each of the sixteen board members not only shares responsibility for overseeing the administration and presentation of the Ellies but also joins in fiercely protecting the integrity of the awards.
For the last fifty years, ASME has cosponsored the Ellies with the Columbia Journalism School. ASME thanks Steve Coll, the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who now serves as dean of the journalism school and Henry R. Luce Professor, for his passionate support of the awards. ASME also thanks Abi Wright, the executive director of the Alfred I. DuPont–Columbia University Awards, for her help organizing the judging of the Ellies and for her service as a member of the National Magazine Awards Board.
On behalf of ASME, I especially want to thank Roger Hodge, national editor of The Intercept, for writing the introduction of the 2016 edition of Best American Magazine Writing. Roger’s work at The Intercept was, of course, recognized by the 2016 Ellie for Columns and Commentary awarded to the highly original—and deeply amusing—Barrett Brown pieces included in this anthology. Not to be overlooked, however, is Roger’s contribution as the former editor in chief of Oxford American to the Ellie for General Excellence won by that magazine this year.
David McCormick of McCormick Literary has represented ASME as its book agent for more than a decade. The members of ASME are grateful for his work on our behalf. Philip Leventhal and Michael Haskell of Columbia University Press deserve special thanks for their commitment to BAMW. Year after year their enthusiasm and skill guarantee the success of each new anthology, and I have long come to depend on their kindness and patience as collaborators.
ASME works closely throughout the year with the members and staff of MPA, the Association of Magazine Media. I want to thank the chair of the MPA board of directors, Steve Lacy of Meredith Corporation, and Linda Thomas Brooks, the president and CEO of MPA, for their steadfast support. As always, thanks are due to my ASME associate, Nina Fortuna, for all she does to make the Ellies a success. I know every member of ASME joins me in considering her the eighth wonder of the world.
Of course, our biggest debt of gratitude belongs to the journalists whose writing and editing the Ellies celebrate, especially those who graciously permit ASME to print their work in Best American Magazine Writing. At a time of startling change, their labors on our behalf—on behalf of all readers—guarantees the future success of magazine journalism.
For more information about the National Magazine Awards, including a searchable database of winners and finalists, go to
http://www.magazine.org/asme. To view the presentation of the 2016 Ellies, visit the ASME YouTube Channel.