The Walrus has scored the most nominations for Canada’s 2009-2010 National Magazine Awards.
The Toronto-based current-affairs monthly has pretty much dominated the NMAs since its inception in the fall of 2003 and is doing so again this year, earning a total of 33 nominations, including 23 in various writing categories. Its nearest rival is Maclean’s, the Toronto-based news weekly, which received a total of 27 nods, including 22 in writing categories. Toronto Life, a monthly, is in third place, with a total of 26 nominations, 19 of them for written work.
The Walrus, June 2010 edition.
The nominations were announced Tuesday in Montreal by the National Magazine Awards Foundation.
Once again, Report on Business magazine, published by The Globe and Mail, dominates the business category with 22 nominations, more than twice its nearest competitor, Canadian Business, which has nine nods. That total puts the monthly in fourth place over all. ROB magazine is also up for magazine-of-the-year honours, along with Montreal’s quirky bimonthly Maisonneuve and the Yellowknife-based Up Here, which publishes eight times annually and marked its 25th anniversary in 2009. ROB magazine was last named magazine of the year in 1987.
The winners of gold and silver and honourable mentions will be named on June 4 in Toronto. Gold awards carry a cash prize of $1,000 and silver, $500. This year, the NMAs’ 33rd, 84 different publications are vying for awards in a record 47 categories, including written, integrated, visual and special. For the first time, the NMAs will honour digital magazines with seven online awards, including website of the year, best Web-only content, best cross-platform package and best visual design. Other new or renamed categories include best new visual creator, best new magazine writer and best single service article package.
Nominated for website of the year are Canadian Living Magazine, Dogs in Canada and the online-only Torontoist.com, the last a Globe and Mail partner.
Rounding out the top 10 publications, in descending order of nominations, are the francophone weekly L’actualité (in fifth place with 21), the outdoors magazine explore (19), Swerve, a weekly published by the Calgary Herald (13), Air Canada’s in-flight magazine enRoute (11), Maissoneuve (10), Canadian Business and Cottage Life (tied with nine each). Chatelaine, which last year tied Cottage Life for fifth place over all with 11 nominations, scored four nominations this year.
Leading individual writers are Calgary’s Chris Turner and Torontonian Chris Nuttall-Smith, with a total of five nominations each. Two articles by Turner in The Walrus were nominated in a total of four categories; the fifth nomination was for an arts-and-entertainment piece in AlbertaViews. Nuttall-Smith’s nominations came courtesy of Toronto Life (one article short-listed in two categories), ROB magazine (one), The Walrus (one) and enRoute (one). The Globe and Mail’s national editor, Sinclair Stewart, has been short-listed in three categories: two nominations for one article in ROB magazine and one for a Toronto Life feature.
Receiving the 2009-2010 NMA Foundation award for outstanding achievement is Toronto’s Terry Sellwood, chairman of Magazines Canada and general manager of Quarto Communications, the publisher of explore, Cottage Life and other magazines.
A complete list of nominees can be found at www.magazine-awards.com.
