It’s not the Oscars but award season is upon us in the business-to-business magazine industry as well. Canadian Lawyer has a long history of winning awards for our top-notch editorial and art direction. But this year, the magazine has added a new feather to our cap, winning an American Business Media Jesse H. Neal Award for best single article for “War of the words,” our March 2009 cover story by Lisa Gregoire that examined the battle over the right to free speech versus the outlawing of hate speech.
The Neal awards, considered the “Pulitzer Prize of business journalism,” were handed out at a swanky luncheon at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking Central Park in New York on March 11. It was a treat to be there and to be the first publication to win an award that day — you can see a bit of the hardware we got to bring home right here.
Canadian Lawyer was one of three Neal finalists in the best integrated article category as well, for our October 2009 series on diversity in the legal profession. The series included print and online articles, as well as videos and extensive use of social media, which is how we got such a great and varied group of people together for our cover photo that issue. Unfortunately we did not win that one; we were skunked by a food-industry magazine that had a cooking demonstration as part of its multimedia package. So next year lawyers, we’ll be cooking!
As the media and legal businesses have both faced tremendous changes over the past few years, Canadian Lawyer has continued to take on controversial issues of importance to the profession while expanding our multimedia coverage and through more analysis and interaction with our readers. I encourage readers to contact me with your thoughts and story ideas and look forward to reporting on more honours for our publication as awards season progresses.
