• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, October 31, 2007

Boca Raton, FL -- For the second year in a row, The New Yorker has captured the top spot in the American Society of Magazine Editors' best cover contest, taking Cover of the Year for its "9/11 Tightrope-Walker," which appeared on Sept. 11, 2006. The announcement was made by ASME executives on Tuesday during the closing ceremony for the American Magazine Conference. ASME also announced winners in a number of other categories.

The New Yorker cover presents the viewer with the surreal spectacle of a tightrope-walker floating in empty white space, with no visible context. Prompted by curiosity, the viewer flipping through the magazine would encounter another cover, on the third page, showing the same tightrope-walker in mid-air above Lower Manhattan, floating between the footprints of the destroyed World Trade Center--a reference to Philippe Petit's dramatic 1974 tightrope walk between the two towers.

Last year, the magazine won cover of the year for a cover published shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, showing members of the Bush Administration apparently oblivious to rising floodwaters in the Oval Office.