by Sid Holt
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.
Vice
FINALIST—SINGLE-TOPIC ISSUE
Q&As are pretty standard magazine fare. Q&As with the president of the United States are not—especially when the Q&A occurred during the first visit by a sitting president to a federal prison. President Obama was interviewed by Shane Smith, the cofounder and CEO of Vice Media, for Vice’s October 2015 “Prison Issue,” part of the organization’s multiplatform investigation of mass incarceration in the United States. The Ellie judges who nominated “The Prison Issue” for the National Magazine Award for Single-Topic Issue described the interview as “historic” and praised the magazine for having “the confidence, generosity and imagination to turn over its pages to the 2.2 million Americans whom we always hear about but rarely hear from.” Since 2012, Vice Media has received six Ellie nominations, including three in 2016, and won two Video awards.
Shane Smith
Fixing the System
An Interview with President Obama on Prison Reform
This past July, Vice accompanied President Barack Obama to the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, to film a special episode about the U.S. criminal justice system for our show on HBO. It was the first time a sitting president has visited a federal prison. Below are excerpts, slightly edited for length and clarity, from a sit-down interview during the episode, which aired Sunday, September 27, on HBO.
SHANE SMITH: This is the first time in history a sitting president has visited a federal prison. Why now? Why is it important?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Over the last twenty years, we’ve seen a shift in incarceration rates that is really unprecedented. We’ve seen a doubling of the prison population. A large percentage of that is for nonviolent drug offenses.
There are twenty-one times the number of federal drug offenders now than there were in the eighties; there are more federal incarcerations for drug offenses than there are for homicide, aggravated assault, kidnapping, robbery, weapons, immigration, arson, sex offenses, extortion, bribery, etcetera, etcetera, combined.* How did that happen?
I think there was a lot of fear. The War on Drugs, the crack epidemic, it became, I think, a bipartisan cause to get tough on crime. Incarceration became an easy, simple recipe in the minds of a lot of folks. Nobody ever lost an election because they were too tough on crime.
And so nobody stepped back and asked, is it really appropriate for somebody who’s engaged in a serious but nonviolent drug offense to get more time than a rapist?
What’s been interesting is that violent crime rates have consistently declined, and the costs of incarceration obviously have skyrocketed.
The stats are staggering: One in seventeen white men have the chance they will go to prison in their lifetime, compared with one in three black men. Is the criminal justice system in America racist?
I think the criminal justice system interacts with broader patterns of society in a way that results in injustice and unfairness. The system, every study has shown, is biased somewhere institutionally in such a way where an African American youth is more likely to be suspended from school than a white youth for engaging in the same disruptive behavior. More likely to be arrested, more likely to be charged, more likely to be prosecuted aggressively, more likely to get a stiffer sentence.
The system tilts in a direction that is unjust. And particularly when you think about no
nviolent drug offenses. This is an area where the statistics are so skewed, you have to question whether we have become numb to the costs that it has on these communities, whether we think it’s somehow normal for black youth or Latino youth to be going through the system in this way. It’s not normal. And it has to be addressed from soup to nuts in order for us to get some better outcomes.
You’ve done drugs. And you said today, “Look, I’ve made bad decisions when I was young.” Pretty much everybody does. “But you know, I was in a community or I had the ability to not have as harsh ramifications for my mistakes.” Is one of the reasons why you’re here today because, perhaps, you’re the first president to feel empathy for the people who are here?
Well, I’d like to think other presidents feel the same way, but I can tell you I feel it acutely.
When I moved to Chicago and I started doing community organizing in low-income neighborhoods, one of the most powerful thoughts that I had was driving by street corners with kids who at that stage—I was in my early twenties—really weren’t that far off from where I was, and knowing that the mistakes they made would land them potentially in prison, in ways that just were not true for me growing up in Hawaii. The notion that you or I couldn’t have easily been drawn into that, that somehow we wouldn’t have fallen prey to the temptations of the streets, I think, that doesn’t feel right to me. That doesn’t feel true.
You’ve said—a lot of other people have said, as well—the War on Drugs is a failure; the criminal justice system has problems. That’s bipartisan now. Both sides of the aisle are saying, “Yes, we realize there are problems.” This has become a big issue for you. Can it be fixed?
There’s a whole bunch of front-end investments that we can make: If we focus on intervening with young people early; if we focus on the schools and making sure that black boys and Latino boys aren’t suspended at higher rates.
If we’re really investing in their education and they’re reading at a third-grade level when they are in third grade, then we know they are less likely to get into the criminal-justice system in the first place. If we invest in education programs in prisons—you heard those guys talking about how much of a difference it made for them. Substance-abuse programs and education programs.
Vocational programs.
Vocational programs, so that we recognize you’ve got to prepare them for a better way when they get of here. Because most of them are going to get out of here eventually.
If we can make progress on this subset of the problem, which is nonviolent drug offenses, we can actually get a working majority around this issue.
Nothing’s easy. Most people aren’t interacting with the criminal justice system, and they don’t see the impact that it’s having on their communities. And part of our job is just to shine a spotlight. I think there’s enough empathy among people of goodwill across the political spectrum that we may be able to pull this off.
* While the majority of federal prisoners are indeed drug offenders, the majority of inmates overall are in state prisons on violent offenses.
Bloomberg Businessweek
WINNER—SINGLE-TOPIC ISSUE
Front to back, the entire June 15–28, 2015, issue of Bloomberg Businessweek was devoted to the publication of “Code: An Essay.” In a note introducing the article, Josh Tyrangiel, then the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, explained the importance of the piece: “Now that software lives in our pockets, runs our cars and homes, and dominates our waking lives, ignorance is no longer acceptable. The world belongs to people who code. Those who don’t understand will be left behind.” Written by Paul Ford, who is both a programmer and an essayist (he has a book coming soon from FSG), “Code” is filled with real-world insight and regular-guy charm. Which is a good thing, because the story that won the Ellie for Single-Topic Issue was originally 38,000 words in length. This version is a mere 16,500.
Paul Ford
What Is Code?
If You Don’t Know, You Need to Read This
1. The Man in the Taupe Blazer
You are an educated, successful person capable of abstract thought. A VP doing an SVP’s job. Your office, appointed with decent furniture and a healthy amount of natural light filtered through vertical blinds, is commensurate with nearly two decades of service to the craft of management.
Copper plaques on the wall attest to your various leadership abilities inside and outside the organization: One, the Partner in Innovation Banquet Award 2011, is from the sales team for your support of its eighteen-month effort to reduce cycle friction—net sales increased 6.5 percent; another, the Civic Guidelight 2008, is for overseeing a volunteer team that repainted a troubled public school top to bottom.
You have a reputation throughout the organization as a careful person, bordering on penny-pinching. The way you’d put it is, you are loath to pay for things that can’t be explained. You expect your staff to speak in plain language. This policy has served you well in many facets of operations, but it hasn’t worked at all when it comes to overseeing software development.
For your entire working memory, some Internet thing has come along every two years and suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars (inevitably millions) must be poured into amorphous projects with variable deadlines. Content management projects, customer relationship management integration projects, mobile apps, paperless office things, global enterprise resource planning initiatives—no matter how tightly you clutch the purse strings, software finds a way to pry open your fingers.
Here we go again. On the other side of your (well-organized) desk sits this guy in his mid-thirties with a computer in his lap. He’s wearing a taupe blazer. He’s come to discuss spending large sums to create intangible abstractions on a “website re-architecture project.” He needs money, support for his team, new hires, external resources. It’s preordained that you’ll give these things to him, because the CEO signed off on the initiative—and yet should it all go pear-shaped, you will be responsible. Coders are insanely expensive, and projects that start with uncomfortably large budgets have an ugly tendency to grow from there. You need to understand where the hours will go.
He says: “We’re basically at the limits with WordPress.”
Who wears a taupe blazer?
The CTO was fired six months ago. That CTO has three kids in college and a mustache. It was a bad exit. The man in the taupe blazer (TMitTB) works for the new CTO. She comes from Adobe and has short hair and no mustache.
Here is what you’ve been told: All of the computer code that keeps the website running must be replaced. At one time, it was very valuable and was keeping the company running, but the new CTO thinks it’s garbage. She tells you the old code is spaghetti and your systems are straining as a result. That the third-party services you use, and pay for monthly, are old and busted. Your competitor has an animated shopping cart that drives across the top of the screen at checkout. That cart remembers everything customers have ever purchased and generates invoices on demand. Your cart has no memory at all.
Salespeople stomp around your office, sighing like theater students, telling you how embarrassed they are by the site. Nothing works right on mobile. Orders are cutting off halfway. People are logged out with no warning. Something must be done.
Which is why TMitTB is here.
Who’s he, anyway? Webmaster? IT? No, he’s a “Scrum Master.”
“My people are split on platform,” he continues. “Some want to use Drupal 7 and make it work with Magento—which is still PHP.” He frowns. “The other option is just doing the back end in Node.js with Backbone in front.”
You’ve furrowed your brow; he eyes you sympathetically and explains: “With that option it’s all JavaScript, front and back.”
Those are all terms you’ve heard. You’ve read the first parts of the Wikipedia pages and a book on software project estimation. It made some sense at the time.
You ask the universal framing question: “Did you cost these options?”
He give
s you a number and a date. You know in your soul that the number is half of what it should be and that the project will go a year over schedule. He promises long-term efficiencies: The $85,000 in Oracle licenses will no longer be needed; engineering is moving to a free, open-sourced database. “We probably should have done that back when we did the Magento migration,” he says. Meaning, of course, that his predecessor probably should have done that.
You consult a spreadsheet and remind him that the Oracle contract was renewed a few months ago. So, no, actually, at least for now, you’ll keep eating that cost. Sigh.
This man makes a third less than you, and his education ended with a BS from a large, perfectly fine state university. But he has 500+ connections on LinkedIn. That plus sign after the “500” bothers you. How many more than 500 people does he know? Five? Five thousand?
In some mysterious way, he outranks you. Not within the company, not in restaurant reservations, not around lawyers. Still: He strokes his short beard; his hands are tanned; he hikes; his socks are embroidered with little ninja.
“Don’t forget,” he says, “we’ve got to budget for apps.”
This is real. A Scrum Master in ninja socks has come into your office and said, “We’ve got to budget for apps.” Should it all go pear-shaped, his career will be just fine.
