Walrus leads National Magazine Award pack of finalists

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Canadian Magazine Industry News

3 May 2011, TORONTO

Walrus leads National Magazine Award pack of finalists

After a false start, the final countdown has begun to the 34th annual National Magazine Awards with the release yesterday of the official list of finalists.

Leading the pack in total nominations, as it has for several years, is Toronto-based current affairs magazine The Walrus. And the three finalists for Magazine of the Year are Winnipeg-based Canada’s History (editor Mark Reid), Toronto-based Cottage Life (editor Penny Caldwell), and personal finance title MoneySense (editor Duncan Hood).

The Top 12 list of nominated titles follows the break.

The NMAs hand out metal in 43 written, visual, integrated and online categories. The Gold, Silver and Honourable Mention awards will be announced in Toronto on June 10 at the gala presented by CDS Global. Click here for tickets.

First-time nominated magazines this year include Eye Weekly, Maison & Demeure, The Feathertale Review, Open File, Sparksheet, Boulderpavement, CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, Corporate Knights, Garden Making, Hardly Magazine, International Architecture & Design, Legion, Moi & cie, Musicworks, Western Living Condo, and Your Business.

The National Magazine Awards Foundation apologized for the glitch that saw a premature and incorrect list of nominees released on April 6. “The NMAF sincerely regrets this unfortunate incident and any confusion caused to individuals who were named on that list but are not nominees for this year’s awards,” the non-profit organization stated.

Top 12 Finalist Magazines, by total nominations

Title	Nominations
The Walrus	35
Report on Business	31
Toronto Life	30
L’actualité	22
explore	18
Maisonneuve	16
Maclean’s	13
enRoute	12
Swerve	10
Canadian Geographic	9
Cottage Life	9
Chatelaine	9

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Comments (11) Post a Comment

Comments:

1. Anonymous says:

8 May 2011 at 8:22 AM

Surely the most meaningless awards competition going. And nice to see that the Walrus is still spending their shameful grants and charity money wisely. Pathetic.

2. Not Impressed says:

10 May 2011 at 11:29 AM

Interesting. The winners list reads like a list of the companies who line up for the govt. grants every year. But as for the awards, do you think anyone really cares. It's become a game of patting each other on the back in a small club. The deserving publishers just don't care.

3. Ga says:

10 May 2011 at 12:42 PM

It's time to have a good look at the whole notion of "industry awards". The arrogance of thinking that only those "in the business" have the credentials to judge is just incredible, don't you think? And now that we have the technology to let actual customers, clients, readers decide, we should use it.

4. Anonymous says:

11 May 2011 at 10:47 AM

As one who has been in the publishing business for more than 25 years, I've long since accepted these awards are nothing more than the old boy's club agreeing to applaud each other in an absolute shameless showing of over inflated ego tripping. Is it my imagination, or are there never new titles in the winner's circle? I doubt that it's a case of the new titles not being good enough for consideration, but more a case of the old boy network at work. Exactly how are winners decided? Let's have the facts! And as for the judges, please don't tell me they work in the magazine industry !

5. Anonymous says:

11 May 2011 at 10:58 AM

Also, there's a massive bias against women's magazines/ content aimed at women. Even though women's mags take up most of the space on the newsstands, and they seriously influence lives of their readers, they are not taken seriously by the judges (male and female) and rarely end up in the Magazine of the Year category. "Male" content like that delivered in TL and the Walrus always seems to be considered more important.

6. Not Impressed says:

11 May 2011 at 2:12 PM

C'mon # 5 please don't play the gender card. The awards program is a joke, but to say it's against women's magazines, when you have Maisonneuve and Chatelaine on the list of winners, the gender card doesn't fit. There are so many areas you can be angry at when it comes to these awards, but this isn't one.

7. Anonymous says:

11 May 2011 at 11:33 PM

This program will not have any credibility in my eyes until the identities of the applicants and their publications aren't given to the judges. No reasonable person who attended their first week of Psych 101 can deny that the judges' opinions are biased by their knowledge of the entrants' identities. It seems to work for the American NMAs, where there is a far greater diversity among nominees and mags are lucky to get four or five noms, never mind this 50 nomination BS.

8. Anonymous says:

12 May 2011 at 12:54 PM

#6: Look at the list in this post above. Virtually no women's magazine (and a very small percentage of the overall nominations come from the women's mags pool)! The fact is that the subject matter in women's magazines is not considered as important as the subject matter in magazine's 1-5 on the above list. This critique is not new.

9. Tired Of Whiners says:

13 May 2011 at 1:03 PM

Quit griping and do some good work. Then maybe you'll get a nomination. Losers. There are 16 magazines up for awards for the first time this year. Old boys' club? Give your whinging heads a shake.

10. Anonymous says:

14 May 2011 at 9:23 PM

#6--I don't think Maisonneuve is a women's magazine

11. Jason says:

16 May 2011 at 12:23 PM

At #3 -- There is no way that readers, clients or customers are capable of effectively dissecting a magazine. There is a craft to creating magazines, nuances in design and editorial, that only those in the industry can pull-out on a reading. Would a regular reader or a client pick-up on the slow transformation of Eye Weekly's covers this past year? (Or, for that matter, appreciate the use of awkward-but-not-annoying white space with the newly launched "The Grid"?)Or how about being able to tell the difference between editorial pablum and the authentic, deep editorial packages that Maisonneuve and Spacing deliver? While we may not agree on the finalists, the idea that, say, my mother, should judge these awards is somewhat insulting to those of us devoted to the craft.. Readers get to "judge" every time they pick-up a copy, subscribe, or write-in.

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