Awards of Excellence Winners Announced

Complete Information on the Award Winners Download the 36-page PDF awards brochure (360K). It includes: a full list of all the national award winners, a feature detailing the achievements Lifetime Achievement Award winner Patrick McGovern, information about the judges, a message from the awards committee chair, information about the society and its officers.

June 25, 2004—Computerworld and CSO magazine were named ASBPE’s large- and small-circulation 2004 Magazines of the Year during ASBPE's annual conference in Philadelphia on June 24.

Judges called Computerworld a “cutting edge” magazine with great design and typography, while CSO was called a “strong voice for people who have challenging jobs.” Both are publications of International Data Group of Framingham, Mass.

CIO and Overdrive magazines received honorable mentions for Magazine of the Year in the 80,000-or-more circulation category. Rounding out the top 10 were Builder, CFO, Government Computer News, Network Computing, Network Magazine, PC World, and VARBusiness.

Meetings & Conventions and Custom Home magazines received honorable mentions in the under-80,000 category. The rest of the top 10 were Bloomberg Wealth Manager, CIO Insight, DC Velocity, Health Leaders, Replacement Contractor, Residential Architect, and Strategic Finance.

Stephen Barr Award

The society also presented the first Stephen Barr Award to Shanghai-based freelancer Adam Minter for his three-part Scrap magazine series on the burgeoning scrap industry in China. The Stephen Barr Award was established to honor the best feature writing in the business press. It is named for a senior contributing editor of CFO magazine who died in 2002, at 43 years of age.

Judges for the award, which was endowed by Stephen Barr's family, called the series “fascinating and surprising.” Said one judge: “Authoritative and beautifully structured, it leads the reader by the hand elegantly through a very complex subject.” Stephen Barr Award judges were George Gendron, former editor of Inc. magazine; Lou Ureneck, visiting professor of journalism at Boston University and head of its Business and Economics Journalism Program; and Roy Harris, senior editor of CFO.

Editorial and Design Awards

Business security issues dominated the individual awards this year. In the 80,000-and-over circulation category, PC Magazine won for best feature article for a story on computer security, while among smaller magazines, Information Security magazine won for its piece, "Trustworthy Yet?" about Microsoft Inc.'s security efforts.

Network Computing and VARBusiness won two cover design awards among large magazines. Among smaller publications, Promo won two top awards for design.

The top overall Web publication awards went to PCMag.com and BusinessWeek Online.

Lifetime Achievement Award

The winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award has been announced: Patrick J. McGovern, founder and chairman of International Data Group (IDG).

McGovern helped create the computer journalism market and is noted for his high standards for editorial integrity. In fact, McGovern could perhaps be called a founding editor of the entire information-technology media industry; in 1959, while a biophysics student at MIT, McGovern became associate editor of Computers and Automation, the very first entry in that strange new genre called “computer magazines.”

McGovern was presented with ASBPE’s 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award during the Society’s Northeastern Region awards ceremony in Newton, Mass. A special acknowledgment was also given to McGovern at the national Awards of Excellence banquet June 24 at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia.

Read more about McGovern and his achievements.

National and regional awards were given in 39 editorial and design categories, with more than 50 judges evaluating 2,457 entries.

Regional Award Winners

Regional awards in ASBPE’s Awards of Excellence competition were distributed at events held in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco. These award ceremonies honor award winners in the regional competitions. Publications compete based on the state they are located in, as follows:

East: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont

Central/Southeast: Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Midwest: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

West: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.