Magazines of the Year Honors
Go To CFO, SQL Server

Gold winners reported on financial scandals, IT, security.

Julia Homer, editor-in-chief of Magazine of the Year CFO, gives a speech at ASBPE’s national conference.

ASBPE honored Boston-based CFO magazine and Loveland, Colorado-based SQL Server as Magazines of the Year in the over-80,000– and under-80,000–circulation divisions respectively. The two publications beat out 117 competitors for the honors.

The judges noted that CFO's reporting "was tough on CFOs ... they pulled no punches ... strong and not apologist." CFO's 450,000 subscribers are senior executives with finance responsibilities.

SQL Server, a Penton Media publication, "does a superb job for its audience," with strength that "goes far beyond the magazine's content," according to the judges.

ASBPE presented awards in a total of 37 editorial, design, and web categories at presentations during the National Editorial Conference. The winners were culled from among more than 2,250 contest entries.

This year, coverage of corporate financial scandals and reforms, and information-technology and corporate security dominated the articles that won gold awards. CFO and its CFO IT quarterly spin-off, published by The Economist Group, together won six gold awards, while magazines or websites that are part of IDG Communications — Bio-IT World, CIO, CSO, Computerworld, Macworld and PC World — won 13 golds.

Kathy Blomstrom, editor of Magazine of the Year SQL Server.

Besides the Magazine of the Year Awards, there were two other awards that recognized overall excellence in B2B publications. Variety.com. took the honors for best overall web publication, and gold awards for best new publication went to Replacement Contractor (in the over-80,000 division) and Chief Learning Officer (among under-80,000 magazines).

"Business and trade publications in general were deeply involved in covering the big issues of 2002 from their industry perspectives," said Robert Freedman, president of ASBPE and a senior editor at Washington, D.C. Realtor Magazine. "The outstanding work our winners did proved again that trade magazines make a huge contribution to American journalism."

Lifetime Achievement Award

Also during the conference, Dana Chase, Jr., chairman of Dana Chase Publications and editorial director of Appliance magazine, was named as the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award winners. Diane Ritchey, editor of Appliance, called Chase “an editorial force and man of vision.”

Throughout his career, Chase has promoted growth and innovation in the multibillion dollar appliance industry. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Dana Chase, Sr., who started Appliance magazine in 1944.

Chase has been the editorial director of Appliance since 1978 and “He is responsible for the entire editorial direction of Appliance . . . and its international editions. Although he is sometimes involved in sales and publishing because of his position as owner of Dana Chase Publications, he truly is the force behind the editorial content of the magazine,” Ritchey says. He has established programs that help to make editorial the priority at Appliance.

Scot Stevens, now publisher at The Croydon Group Ltd., said: “I wouldn’t be where I am today in my career without having attended the school of Dana Chase, Jr. Everything I know and value about the business of b-to-b publishing I learned from Dana Chase… . With roots in editorial, I was particularly fortunate to have been mentored by a publisher who held fast to the value of real ‘readership,’ consistently ensuring a high quality editorial product, while just as tenaciously refusing to jump on the rate-cutting bandwagon.”

Other Awards

Magazine of the Year honorable mentions went to CSO and American Demographics in the under-80,000 circulation category and to CIO and IndustryWeek in the 80,000-and-over division.

Other magazines winning gold editorial or Web awards included ABA Journal, Association Meetings, Baseline, Big Builder, BusinessWeek, Catalog Age, CIO Insight, Control, Control Engineering, CRN, Federal Computer Week, Fleet Owner, Florida Trend, Government Executive, Government Computer News, Macworld, Millimeter, National Real Estate Investor, Network Computing, Overdrive, PCT-Pest Control Technology, Pensions & Investments, Presentations, Professional Remodeler, Realtor Magazine, Remodeling, Restaurants and Institutions, Sensors, Strategic Finance, Success In Home Care, Transport Topics, Trustee, US Banker, VAR Business, Wall Street & Technology, Ward's Autoworld, and Workforce.