Ellies 2018 Finalists Announced New York, The New Yorker top list of National Magazine Award nominees; CNN’s Don Lemon to host annual awards lunch on March 13 NEW YORK, NY (February 1, 2018)—The American Society of Magazine Editors today published the list of finalists for the 2018 National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media. For the fifth year, the finalists were first announced in a 90-minute Twittercast. ASME will celebrate the 53rd presentation of the Ellies when each of the 104 finalists is honored at the annual awards lunch. The 2018 winners will be announced during a lunchtime presentation on Tuesday, March 13, at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The lunch will be hosted by Don Lemon, the anchor of “CNN Tonight With Don Lemon,” airing weeknights at 10. More than 500 magazine editors and publishers are expected to attend. The winners receive “Ellies,” the elephant-shaped statuettes that give the awards their name. The awards lunch will include the presentation of the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame Award to the founding editor of Metropolitan Home and Saveur, Dorothy Kalins. Danny Meyer, the chief executive officer of the Union Square Hospitality Group and founder of Shake Shack, will present the Hall of Fame Award to Kalins on behalf of ASME. The 2018 ASME Award for Fiction will also be presented to Michael Ray, the editor of Zoetrope: All-Story. The winners of the 2018 ASME Next Awards for Journalists Under 30 will be honored as well. This year 57 media organizations were nominated in 20 categories, including two new categories, Social Media and Digital Innovation. Twenty publications were nominated for the most prestigious honor, General Excellence. They include large-circulation titles like National Geographic and Bon Appétit, regional magazines like San Francisco and Texas Monthly, literary journals like Oxford American and Virginia Quarterly Review and digital-only publications like Eater and The Marshall Project. Twenty titles received multiple nominations, led by New York with 10 (this is the fifth year in a row that New York has received the most nominations). The New Yorker received eight nominations, followed by The Atlantic and National Geographic, both with five. Other multi-finalists included Bon Appétit, The New York Times Magazine and TIME, each with four, and The California Sunday Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, The Marshall Project, Virginia Quarterly Review and Vogue, each with three. Seven titles got two nominations: Bicycling, GQ, Harper’s Magazine, Pitchfork, Seventeen, Texas Monthly and Wired. The finalists also included 5280, Aperture, Backpacker, BuzzFeed News, Columbia Journalism Review, Consumer Reports, Cosmopolitan, Eater, Elle, GQ Style, Grist, HuffPost Highline, Inc., Longreads, Martha Stewart Weddings, Men’s Health, Mother Jones, National Geographic Traveler, The New Republic, The Outline, Outside, Oxford American, Popular Science, San Francisco, Saveur, SB Nation, SELF, Smithsonian, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Teen Vogue, TMC Pulse, Vanity Fair, W and Women’s Health. One media organization—the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica—was nominated three times for articles published in partnership with other print or digital publications, including National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine and NPR. In addition, Mic and Epic Magazine were nominated for partnerships with TIME and Wired, respectively. Eight media organizations are first-time finalists: Epic Magazine, Grist, Longreads, Mic, NPR, The Outline, SB Nation and TMC Pulse. Digital-first finalists include BuzzFeed News, Eater, Epic Magazine, Grist, HuffPost Highline, Longreads, The Marshall Project, Mic, The Outline, Pitchfork, ProPublica, SB Nation, SELF and Seventeen. Five publications were nominated twice in the same category: The Atlantic in Feature Writing; New York in Magazine Section; The New York Times Magazine in Reporting; The New Yorker in Public Interest; and ProPublica in Reporting for partnerships with National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine. Fifteen publications demonstrated sustained excellence by receiving nominations in the same category for at least the second year in a row. Among the repeat finalists are Bon Appétit, nominated in the General Excellence category seven years in a row and winner of the award in 2014 and 2017; Cosmopolitan, nominated in Personal Service five years in a row and winner in 2014; and The New York Times Magazine, nominated in Feature Writing five years in a row and winner in 2017. Bon Appétit is also a six-time repeat finalist in Design. Especially noteworthy are the achievements of The New Yorker in the Reporting category and New York in Magazine Section. The New Yorker has been nominated in Reporting every year since 1989 except 2007, for a total of 37 nominations, and has won the award 8 times. New York has been nominated 14 times in Magazine Section since 2005 and has won 8 awards. New York is also a repeat finalist this year in General Excellence, Single-Topic Issue and Essays and Criticism, as is The New Yorker in General Excellence and Public Interest. Other repeat finalists include Aperture for the third consecutive year and The Marshall Project and Saveur for the second consecutive year in General Excellence; GQ for the third consecutive year in Design; Seventeen for the second consecutive year in Personal Service; 5280 and Texas Monthly, both for the second consecutive year in Leisure Interests; National Geographic for the third consecutive year in Single-Topic Issue and the second consecutive year in Website; The California Sunday Magazine for the second consecutive year in Single-Topic Issue; and TIME for the second consecutive year in Video. The work of Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is nominated twice this year. Her story “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof” for GQ is nominated in Feature Writing, and her article “Her Eyes Were Watching the Stars” for Elle is nominated in Essays and Criticism. Ghansah was previously nominated in Essay and Criticism in 2014 for her article “If He Hollers Let Him Go” for The Believer. 2 The work of the photographer Lynsey Addario is also nominated twice this year: in Feature Photography for her contribution to “American Women” for Vogue and in Digital Innovation for “Finding Home: 3 Babies, 3 Families, 1 Year” for TIME. Addario was previously nominated for her work for Harper’s Magazine in 2009 and for National Geographic and TIME, both in 2011. The nomination in Feature Photography of James Nachtwey’s “Death Reigns on the Streets of Duterte’s Philippines” for TIME is the seventh nomination or award for Nachtwey’s work. He was previously an Ellie finalist in 2004, 2009 and 2012 for TIME and for National Geographic and Vanity Fair, both in 2007. His photo essay “The Tragedy of Sudan” won the National Magazine Award for TIME in 2005. Nachtwey also received the Creative Excellence Award for lifetime achievement at the 2015 National Magazine Awards dinner. Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose story “My President Was Black” for The Atlantic is nominated in Feature Writing, previously won the award for Essays and Criticism for the same magazine in 2013. His work for The Atlantic was nominated in Columns and Commentary in 2014 and Essays and Criticism in 2015. Caitlin Flanagan, whose story “A Death at Penn State” for The Atlantic is also nominated in Feature Writing, previously won the award for Reviews and Criticism for the same magazine in 2008. Her work for The Atlantic was nominated in Reviews and Criticism in 2002, 2003 and 2004 and in Essays in 2005. The nomination of New York’s Rebecca Traister in Columns and Commentary is the third time in the last four years her work has received recognition. She was nominated in Feature Writing for New York last year and in Columns and Commentary for The New Republic in 2015. Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite, who also write for New York, are nominated this year in Leisure Interests for “The Encyclopedia of Vegan Food.” Raisfeld and Patronite won Leisure Interests with Michael Idov for New York in 2010 for “The Great New York Neoclassical Neapolitan Pizza Revolution”; Patronite with Idov won the same award for New York in 2008 for “Cartography: The Complete Road Map to New York City Street Food.” Writers who have been previously honored also include Howard Bryant (finalist in Columns and Commentary), whose work for ESPN The Magazine was nominated in Columns and Commentary in 2016; Ian Frazier (finalist in Essays and Criticism), whose work for Outside was nominated in Feature Writing in 2003; Jeanne Marie Laskas (finalist in Feature Writing), whose work for GQ was nominated in Feature Writing in 2008; Michael Lewis (finalist in Public Interest), whose work for Vanity Fair was nominated in Feature Writing in 2010; Nina Martin (finalist in Public Interest), whose work for San Francisco was nominated in Public Interest in 2005; and Kathryn Schulz (finalist in Essays and Criticism), whose story “The Really Big One” won Feature Writing for The New Yorker in 2016. Photographers who have been previously honored include Mark Peterson (finalist in Feature Photography), whose portfolio “Front Row at the Political Theater” won Feature Photography for Politico in 2016, and Jonas Bendiksen (finalist in Feature Photography), whose portfolio “Kibera (Winter)” won Photojournalism for The Paris Review in 2007. “Despite financial challenges and political hostility to any kind of factual reporting, magazine journalism both in print and online is truly better than ever,” said Sid Holt, chief executive of ASME. “The stories 3 and images nominated this year rank with the finest achievements in the long history of the National Magazine Awards. ASME is proud to recognize the 57 publications nominated this year for Ellies.” Established in 1966, the National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media are sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and are administered by ASME.