Who-hoo! Mother Jones has just been nominated for three National Magazine Awards. The NMAs are often described as the magazine world’s Academy Awards (without the awful musical medleys). Picking up three Ellie nods is a real honor, and all the more so since we won a General Excellence Award last year. This time, we’ve been nominated in the General Excellence categories for both print and online (our print submission consisted of three special issues on torture, energy, and the new “ECOnomy”). We’re also up in the Public Interest category. As always, we’re pitted against a diverse group of formidable competitors—Foreign Policy, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, and Paste, to name a few. We’re practicing balancing Ellie statues on our noses, just in case. But it’s not too soon to thank you, the key ingredient in our reader-supported journalism, for keeping us on our toes and pushing us to keep going.
Winners will be announced April 30—we’ll keep you updated. The official press release is after the jump.
Mother Jones Nominated for Three National Magazine Awards
The American Society of Magazine Editors today announced the finalists for the 2009 National Magazine Awards—the Oscars of magazine journalism—and Mother Jones was nominated in three categories, including General Excellence for both Print and Online, as well as Public Interest. The San Francisco-based investigative magazine won General Excellence awards in 2008 and 2001 and has won five National Magazine Awards since it was founded in 1976. This marks the first time the magazine has garnered three nominations.
“Being nominated for General Excellence again a year after we won is amazing,” says Mother Jones coeditor Clara Jeffery. “We’re incredibly excited to also be chosen for public interest journalism, and for bringing that journalism to life with interactive tools.”
“At a time of crisis for investigative journalism, this is a thrilling recognition for our nonprofit operation—and the readers and supporters who help keep MoJo’s independent reporting alive,” added coeditor Monika Bauerlein.
Even as many news organizations have been cutting back on their operations, Mother Jones has expanded over the past two years, more than doubling its Web traffic, adding a seven-person Washington bureau headed by veteran capital reporter David Corn, and hiring pioneering blogger Kevin Drum. Mother Jones was featured in a recent New York Times article as a nonprofit model for journalism in tough economic times.
“I was already extremely proud of what the editors and reporters had accomplished in a watershed year, but these recognitions from ASME provide huge external validation of our ‘hybrid’ print-Web model,” said Mother Jones president and publisher Jay Harris.
“The bottom line of our experience: No matter how people get their news, great reporting still matters.”
The winners of the National Magazine Awards will be announced at ASME’s gala event at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York April 30.
A magazine of news, ideas, and ideals, MotherJones.com provides hard-hitting, in-depth reporting and elegant, provocative writing on contemporary issues, informed by a sense of justice and fairness and with a healthy side of sass. Over the past few years, the 33-year-old nonprofit print and online magazine has surprised many observers with, as one columnist put it, an “almost rollicking” spirit. No matter the medium or the story, readers say they value Mother Jones for its integrity and its independent perspective.
