What is a Magazine?

Here the whole media world is debating what or who is a journalist, but it appears that the definitional problems reach a little deeper than even that. A reader has an interesting point about yesterday’s National Magazine Award nominee announcement:

How can the Chronicle of Higher Education be nominated for both a Pulitzer and a NMA? Shouldn’t, by definition, they only be eligible for one or the other?

It seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? One award is for newspapers and one is for magazines. There’s no award for newszines or magapapers.

The Chronicle would appear by just about any definition to be a newspaper — it’s certainly printed on newsprint and there’s nothing glossy about it. However the Chronicle’s “About Us” doesn’t say whether it’s a magazine or a newspaper (although it’s sister publication, the Chronicle of Philanthrophy is clearly labeled a newspaper), so we called Editor Phil Semas.

He told Fishbowl that it’s a question they get with some frequency (including, interestingly enough, from the Pulitzer board itself), but that while the Chronicle considers itself a newspaper, under ASME’s rules, it’s also eligible to enter the National Magazine Awards.

We looked into it a bit farther today and it turns out that ASME’s eligibility rules are rather loose. Their definition of a magazine? “To be considered a magazine, a publication must be issued at regular intervals at least four times a year and must be distributed or sold independently of other publications.”

Indeed under ASME’s definition, it would appear that just about any newspaper could probably enter the National Magazine Awards — and certainly the Village Voice or Variety would probably qualify.

Someone might want to reconsider those rules before Maureen Dowd wins her first “ellie” for opinion.

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