The Marshall Project has been awarded a prestigious National Magazine Award — the Ellie — for general excellence in the Literature, Science and Politics category. The other finalists were Aperture, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones and Poetry magazine. It is the first National Magazine Award for the organization, which was also named as a finalist last year in the feature writing category. It is also the first time an online publication has won in this category.
The breadth of work produced by The Marshall Project in 2016 was being honored, highlights of which include our reporting on private prisoner extradition, solitary confinement, juveniles in the system, and our “Life Inside” series. Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller accepted the award on behalf of The Marshall Project. “We’ll take this honor as a rebuke to the cynicism of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts,’” Keller said. “The criminal justice system — and the country — have never been so in need of real facts and honest news.”
Established in 1966, the National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media are sponsored by ASME in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and are administered by ASME. Sixty-four media organizations were nominated in 20 categories with the winners all receiving Ellies, the elephant-shaped statuettes that give the awards their name.