• by May 7, 2003

Say this for the 2003 National Magazine Awards: The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker did not dominate. This year was more diverse in its merits than past years as Parenting and ESPN took the top circulation general excellence awards. Annual winners The New Yorker and The Atlantic were held to two each, with The Atlantic pulling in a general excellence award for the 500,000 to one million circulation category.

Winning in the two million plus category, the American Society of Magazine Editors citation prasied the magazine for "its mix of service pieces, essays, reportage, and feature articles, the magazine is an indispensable guide and friend. An approachable layout offers readers easy access to critical information and voices of experience, presented with imagination, thoughtfulness, and that essential tool for child rearing - humor." ESPN, winning the one million plus category was cirted for Graphically, it scores with power and finesse, using large-format photography and clever charts and graphs to maximum effect. And the writing is impressively substantive, pushing the boundaries of what sports journalism can be. ESPN is definitely a magazine at the top of its game."

Other general excellence winners included Texas Monthly, Architectural Record and Foreign Policy. Slate won the general excellence online award . The New Yorker won for reporting and fiction. Other major winners included Outside for personal service, National Geographic Adventure for leisure, Harper's for feature writing, The Nation for commentary and Vanity Fair for criticism.

The ceremony, held at The Waldorf-Astoria in midtown Manhattan before 1,200 editors, publishers and their guests, there were sobering reminders of the state of the world. ASME paid tribute to Michael Kelly, former editor of The Atlantic Monthly, who was killed while covering the war in Iraq. A number of the finalist articles, essays and reports focused on war, terrorism, homeland security and the situation in the Middle East.