The National Magazine Awards scheduled for March 12 are being postponed due to the coronavirus.
For the first time in the 55-year history, the annual ceremony known as the Academy Awards of the magazine publishing world has been pulled. The event, which had been scheduled to take place at Brooklyn Steel, a music venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is expected to be rescheduled for later this spring, but a new date has yet to be decided.
“ASME fully hoped to host the Ellie awards this week,” said Sidney Holt, executive director of the American Society of Magazine Editors, which sponsors the awards with the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
“We’re trying to come up with a date and thinking it will be sometime in May,” Holt said, adding that the new date depends on the ever-changing status of coronavirus outbreak, which has infected 142 people in New York and 11 in New Jersey.
Cases across the US have grown in recent weeks to 566 with 22 deaths, up from zero at the end of February.
Nominations were announced a month ago with New York Times Magazine gaining 10 nominations and New York Magazine and National Geographic with nine nominations each — leading the pack of glossy magazines and digital publishers.
The winners are a closely held secret until the night of the ceremony.
“We won’t announce the winners until we hold the event,” said Holt. “We’re working on a day now,” he said.
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