ASBPE Reveals 2005 Awards

CMO and Restaurants & Institutions Take Brand-new magazine, industry stalwart take top honors.

Photo: CMO magazine cover Photo: R&I magazine
CMO was named the Magazine of the Year in the 80,000-and-under circulation division. Restaurants & Institutions was the winner in the large-circulation division.

CLEVELAND — CMO, in its first year of publication, and Restaurants & Institutions, long an industry standard, have been presented with the 2005 Magazine of the Year awards by the American Society of Business Publication Editors.
In ASBPE’s 27th annual competition among business-to-business (b-to-b) publications, the Society also gave its Stephen Barr Award for the year’s best feature writing to John Gibeaut, a senior reporter with the ABA Journal. Publications won awards in 40 individual editorial and design categories.
CMO, a magazine for chief marketing officers, won the Magazine of the Year award in the under-80,000 circulation category, while Restaurants & Institutions was honored among magazines with circulations of 80,000 or more. CMO also won six individual national prizes. In addition, Restaurants & Institutions received a Gold for best publication redesign at the ASBPE awards banquet, which was held at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum on Tuesday, June 21.
ASBPE’s Magazine of the Year competition, the most rigorous in the b-to-b market, involves an examination of three consecutive issues in such areas as reporting, usefulness, layout and design, and organization. More than 100 publications competed.
Judges called CMO “slick and smart,” with beautiful typography, numerous entry points, and great cover design. They cited Restaurants & Institutions for its elegance, consistency, excellent writing, and user friendliness.
Other magazines in the top 10 among larger publications were Network World and Remodeling (which received special Honorable Mentions) along with

Among under-80,000 magazines, others in the top 10 were CIO Insight and Residential Architect (Honorable Mentions) and

ASBPE is a 750-member association of editors and writers working on business, trade, and association magazines and their related Internet publications.
“We heartily congratulate our Magazine of the Year winners and our honorable mentions,” said ASBPE president Rob Freedman, senior editor at Realtor magazine. “These awards, along with those in all our other categories, represent the toughest honors to attain in our industry, not only because of our comprehensive criteria but also because of all the excellent publications that enter the contest.”
This year, ASBPE had a record 2,610 entries. Computerworld led in total awards won with eight, while PC World and CMO captured seven, and CIO and Network World six each.
John Gibeaut’s feature-writing award, which comes with a $500 prize, recognized two articles in the ABA Journal, one detailing the negative impact of mandatory minimum sentences for crimes, and the other describing the harm from state budget cuts on prosecutors’ offices around the country. Judges praised Gibeaut’s success in using characters to bring his stories to life. The Stephen Barr Award is named for a senior contributing editor of CFO magazine who died in 2002 at 43 years of age.

Other Top Editorial, Design, and Internet Awards

Also in the editorial division, Digital Connect and Small Firm Business were named the best new publications in their respective circulation divisions. The best newsletter Gold went to Technology and Learning: School CIO. In a typical editorial category, special section, Network World won for a section on industry enterprise, while American School Board Journal won for its retrospective, “Brown Vs. Board of Education: the Ruling that Changed America.”
Among top ASBPE design awards for 2005, Risk & Insurance and Restaurants & Institutions won for publication redesign; CMO and Digital World won for new publication design; Plate and CIO won for overall typography; and HealthLeaders and Civil Engineering won for feature article design.
In the Internet division, Variety.com Headline News took the highest honors among
e-newsletters; CMOmagazine.com, the site for Magazine of the Year winner CMO, won for overall Web publication and new Web publication; Oracle Technology Network won for interactive community; and PC World Online took the Gold for original Web news section.