Esquire, New Yorker receive top magazine awards for year

Esquire, America’s oldest men’s magazine, was the big winner at the National Magazine Awards, picking up four of the prestigious annual prizes. The New Yorker, the winningest magazine in the 39-year history of the awards, collected three more prizes.

For the second time in three years, Newsweek, owned by the Washington Post Co., won the coveted prize for general excellence for magazines with a circulation of more than 2 million.

Esquire, nominated in seven categories, won prizes Wednesday for reviews and criticism, fiction, design and profile writing. The reviewing award went to Tom Carson, the magazine’s former movie columnist. The design award was given to Esquire’s design director, John Korpics. The fiction award went to stories by Arthur Miller, Stephen King and George Saunders.

Bill Zehme won the profile-writing award for a portrait of disgraced newspaper columnist Bob Greene, who used to write a column for Esquire. “This melancholy tale delves into the aftermath of Greene’s firing from the Chicago Tribune for alleged sexual impropriety,” the judges wrote, “and looks at how small choices and misguided actions shape, and maybe ruin, a life.”

Esquire’s editor in chief, David Granger, said: “I thought we had a chance to win one, but I’m shocked that we won four. I think it shows that Esquire is one of the few magazines for men that has range, that wins awards for serious journalism and also gives men stuff that’s fun and stuff that’s helpful.”

Nominated in 11 categories, the New Yorker won for essays, feature writing and public interest. Laura Hillenbrand, author of the best-selling book “Seabiscuit,” won the essays prize for “A Sudden Illness,” the story of her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome. Katherine Boo, winner of a Pulitzer Prize while a reporter at the Washington Post, received the feature-writing prize for “The Marriage Cure,” a story about two poor Oklahoma women enrolled in a Bush administration program on how to get and stay married, part of its effort to end poverty.

Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative reporter who won the 1970 Pulitzer for exposing the My Lai massacre, won the public-interest prize for three articles on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy. Hersh did not attend the awards, held at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, because he was busy working. Reached at his Washington office, he was also too busy for chitchat, even congratulatory chitchat.

“Yeah, I just heard,” he said, sounding harried. “That’s good. But I can’t talk. I’m actually on deadline.... What can I say? I’m glad blah blah blah, garbage, garbage, blah blah. But I’m working.”

Which just might be the most refreshing award-acceptance speech in history.

Hersh was one of several writers honored for Iraq-related journalism. New York magazine columnist Michael Wolff won the columns and commentary award for three columns written from Qatar early in the war about the military’s manipulation of the media. And Rolling Stone writer-photographer Evan Wright won the reporting award for “The Killer Elite,” a three-part series about one group of Marines that invaded Iraq.

“In the course of myriad firefights, mortar shellings and ambushes, Wright won the trust of his subjects,” the judges wrote, “but he remained clear-eyed, depicting the soldiers’ cold-bloodedness as well as their humanity. Brilliant down to the last detail.”

The judges cited Newsweek’s Iraq coverage in awarding it the prize for general excellence in the largest circulation category. Newsweek also won the award in 2002.