So the American Society of Magazine Editors–the organization behind the National Magazine Awards–is expanding the NMA prize categories to include, generally, “digital awards” for online media. In addition to a new “Magazine of the Year” award, which will recognize excellence in the combination of print and online content, ASME has created categories, per The New York Times, for “mobile media, news reporting, interactive tool, podcasting, video and community, among others.”
But definitions in this regard are…murky. More from the Times:
Just what defines an online magazine — versus an online newspaper or blog — will largely be left up to the publications and the judges, said Sid Holt, the chief executive of ASME.
“The Huffington Post, if it defines itself as a magazine, we would accept the entry. If it defines itself as a newspaper, then of course it should enter the Pulitzers,” he said.
In other news, the staff of Columbia Journalism Review, at our editorial meeting this morning, have decided that CJR’s official new tagline is: “The Most Magfabulous and Engagementastic Print-Digital Hybrid of Ideas That You Will Ever Encounter in Print or Pixel.”
See you at the awards lunch!
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.