Saveur, New Yorker Each Win Two Awards

Tuesday’s luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria tasted especially good to staffers of the new food magazine Saveur, which vaulted out of obscurity to win two National Magazine Awards for work published last year.

In the 30th annual presentation sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors, 2-year-old Saveur won awards in the categories of photography and special interests for Gene Bourg’s piece on the Acadian region of Louisiana.

Saveur tied the New Yorker, which won awards for reporting (Connie Bruck’s analysis of Newt Gingrich’s rise to power) and essays/criticism by art critic Simon Schama.

Civilization won the general-excellence award among publications with circulations of 100,000 to 400,000. The other general-excellence winners were the Sciences (under 100,000), Outside (400,000 to 1 million) and Business Week (more than 1 million).

For the second year, the feature-writing award went to GQ writer Tom Junod, who explored the questions of rehabilitation and repentance as a rapist awaited release from jail.

SmartMoney won the personal-service award for Walecia Konrad’s two-part series on how to finance a college education. Harper’s Magazine claimed the fiction prize for stories by Mark Slouka, George Saunders and Tova Reich. Texas Monthly won the public-interest honor for Mimi Swartz’s examination of changes in the health-care industry and how they affect one local doctor.

The West Coast was represented by two winners--San Francisco-based Wired, for design and Bon Appetit, in Los Angeles, for its issue on the food and culture of the Mediterranean.

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday.