The American Society of Magazine Editors has just announced the finalists for the 2013 Magazine of The Year. Just like the other National Magazine Awards finalists, the winner will be named at an award ceremony on Thursday, May 2, at the Marriott Marquis. Congrats to all the nominees.

2013 Magazine of The Year Finalists:

• Esquire (General Excellence, Print; Magazine Section; Personal Service; Tablet Magazine)
• Glamour (General Excellence, Digital Media)
• National Geographic (General Excellence, Print; General Excellence, Digital Media; Photography; Feature Photography; Website; Tablet Magazine; Multimedia)
• New York (General Excellence, Print; Design; Feature Photography; Magazine Section; Essays and Criticism; Columns and Commentary)
• Time (Design; Photography; Multimedia)

Yesterday, when FishbowlNY covered the 2012 National Magazine Award finalists, we expected the typical backlash against the major publishing houses and our fine city. While there was some of that, many people took the ASME to task for the noticeable lack of women writers.

As Ann Friedman — the Executive Editor of GOOD — noted, “Women hold their own or dominate in servicey categories (public interest, personal service) and fiction. They are not represented at all in the categories of reporting, feature writing, profile writing, essays and criticism, columns and commentary.” Alyssa Rosenberg, writing for Think Progress, added that the “women’s” category ends up hurting female writers:

The division in General Excellence creates an incentive for women’s magazines to genuinely specialize their coverage across the board, while men’s magazines have incentives to commission features and criticism that compete with publications like the New Yorker and The Atlantic.

Sid Holt, the ASME’s Chief Executive, brushed off the criticism. He wrote to Poynter and said it was all “Kind of silly,” went through the selection process and cited past nominations as proof that there is no bias:

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The ASME handed out its 2012 Digital Ellie awards today, so let’s take a look at the winners. New York grabbed the big prize, nabbing the Ellie for General Excellence. It also won an Ellie for the Website category. Wired also took home two Ellies, one for Excellence in Digital Reporting and one for Design.

Others celebrating today are listed below.

• Men’s Health, for Personal Service
• The Daily Beast’s Book Beast, for Website Department
• The American Scholar, for Commentary
• Time’s Populist app, for Utility App
• Foreign Policy, for Multimedia
• The New York Times Magazine, for Video
• National Geographic, for Tablet Editions (August 2011, September 2011 and November 2011)

With the Oscars now over, let’s continue the self-congratulatory awards news with The American Society of Magazine Editors’ Digital Ellies finalists. Leading the way with 10 nominations is Condé Nast. Golf Digest, GQ, The New Yorker and Wired were selected for doing great things in the digital realm.

Runner-up was Time Inc.with six nominations for Cooking Light, EW.com, People, Sports Illustrated and Time. The Washington Post Company held down third place with four nods for Foreign Policy and Slate.

Below is the full list of finalists. If you happen to work at one of these publications, pat yourself on the back and be sure to humblebrag about it on Twitter.

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The great Jerry Seinfeld once said, “Awards don’t mean a goddamn thing. It’s stupid, they’re all stupid.” However! Everyone likes to get them, no matter how meaningless they are.

With that in mind, The American Society of Magazine Editors have announced the finalists for Digital Media – called the Digital Ellies – and both Time Inc. and Condé Nast received a slew of nominations.

Time was the big winner, with nominations spanning across nine of its titles, including Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, LIFE.com, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Sunset and Time. Condé Nast wasn’t too far behind with seven nominations for work by Epicurious, The New Yorker, Self, Vogue and Wired.com.

And since it seems so appropriate with the Academy Awards coming up, here’s another quote from Seinfeld’s anti-award show rant:

I don’t know why we’re so fascinated with actors in this culture. They haven’t got a thought in their stupid bed-head hairdo covered brains. We must honor this man! Why? He pretended to be Bob Johnson! He’s a genius I tell you! A genius! Playing dress-up and pretend is not genius ladies and gentleman, it’s not genius. Roll the cameras, put on these clothes, stand there, ready? Say what we told you to say!

You may have already seen this video floating around the Interwebs, but we thought it was just too cool not to share.

The American Society of Magazine Editors and the Magazine Publishers of America have compiled 92 covers that represent the decade that was, visually calling to mind ten years of events and experiences that shaped our country and our world — from September 11 to Hurricane Katrina to Obama’s election, the phenomena of Google, Apple and Tina Fey — in just two minutes.

Hope you enjoy as much as we do.

Previously: MPA’s Tweetable Truths Give Hope To The Magazine Industry

Last week, we asked FishbowlNY readers: What party or event did the media overrun in 2009? And we got our reply: an overwhelming 88 percent of you said that the Presidential Inauguration was the biggest media blow-out of the year.

To be honest, that was sort of a no-brainer. When your kids ask you where you were the first African American was sworn into office, you’ll probably remember that better than, say, the 2009 South by Southwest festival (which came in third with four percent of the votes).

And FishbowlNY was there, covering The Huffington Post‘s Inaugural Ball! (Big thanks to former FishbowlNY editor Glynnis MacNicol for all that fabulous coverage.)

For music lovers and techies though, the week-long Austin party will probably be remembered as our generation’s Burning Man, but with more clothes and different drugs. But even the stunt of British developers taking over a conference room and holding a “Not Another Social Media Panel” panel failed to convince our readers that the SXSW festival was more important than Barack Obama this year. Who says we don’t have our priorities straight?

Coming in fourth was The Webbies with two percent of your vote, while The National Magazine Awards (The Ellies) and the Time 100 party garnered no votes whatsoever. But we’d like to give a special consolation prize both to The Ellies and the entirety of Internet Week, the latter of which drew crowds large enough to be considered at least the New York techie’s version of SXSW. (The music conference portion would be CMJ, we guess.)

And The Ellies were particularly important this year, since it was the first year that the American Society of Magazine Editors recognized digital media in their applicant pool. Next year, without any election to overshadow it, The Ellies may take the lead as media’s biggest event, as they introduce 12 new categories for online journalism.

As for the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and Grammys? That must be the six percent “Other” that people voted for. Was there an event we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Previously: Poll: What Was The Biggest Media Event of 2009?, HuffPo Inaugural Ball Celebrates Democracy of the Line-Up

FishbowlNY editor Amanda Ernst once again joined the media-bistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast this morning, joining hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy‘s Matt Van Hoven to discuss the day’s biggest media headlines.

First, Amanda talked about her “Today” show appearance, then the group dove right into yesterday’s news about Bloomberg LP’s acquisition of BusinessWeek.

Also discussed: How Conde Nast has lost $1 billion in advertising revenue, Rupert Murdoch-owned MySpace may be worthless and the American Society of Magazine Editors is adding more award categories.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Yesterday was the first day to vote in the American Society of Magazine Editors‘ best cover of the year contest on Amazon.com.

You can log on to vote for your favorite among the six finalists in ten categories: Best in Science, Technology & Nature; Best in Business; Sexiest Cover; Best in Lifestyle; Best Obama Cover; Best in House & Home; Most Delicious Cover; Best in Fashion & Beauty; Best in Sports & Fitness and Best in Entertainment & Celebrity.

The New Yorker and New York magazine are both well-represented among the 60 finalists and some covers — like Entertainment Weekly‘s October 3, 2008 satire of The New Yorker‘s controversial Obama cartoon cover — show up more than once.

Voting on the finalists will be open until September 20. Voting for the grand prize winner will open up on September 21 and will run until September 30.

Category winners and the overall winner will be announced by ASME President David Willey at the Magazine Publishers of America’s first-ever Innovation Summit on October 14 in New York.

Check out a gallery of all the finalists here and don’t forget to cast your vote, because when you do, you’ll be entered to win a $10,000 Amazon.com gift card.

Traditionally, media types like to party amongst themselves, dress up in tuxedos and eat chocolate fondue and call it an industry confab. But times are tough. As the print media shrinks, so too do the glitzy, pricey conferences.

Both the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Magazine Publishers of America have canceled their annual meetings this year due to high price tags and low expected attendance.

However, sometimes the show must go on. Last week, the American Society of Magazine Editors held their 44th Annual National Magazine awards dinner, albeit with some modifications — they dumped the popular chocolate fondue, scaled back the cheese bar and decided not to ask attendees to don black tie attire, Forbes reported.

Meanwhile, here at Mediabistro we’re gearing up for a conference of our own, Mediabistro Circus, which is going on as planned on June 2-3. We’ll be there, will you?

What do you think about industry groups canceling conferences and awards banquets? Leave your thoughts in the comments.