Business

Huge Ellies upset

Harper’s Magazine last night pulled an upset win for excellence in reporting over the heavily favored Rolling Stone and perennial winner The New Yorker at the National Magazine Awards in Manhattan.

The award was for “The Guantanamo Suicides” by Scott Horton, which appeared in the March issue of Harper’s.

Horton beat out Michael Hastings’ “The Runaway General,” the Rolling Stone story that appeared to be the favorite, since it led to the dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal from his post running the war in Afghanistan.

While it created a furor at the time it was published, its impact was blunted after the Pentagon issued a report in April that cleared McChrystal of wrongdoing and raised questions about the accuracy of the article. Rolling Stone insisted the article was “accurate in every detail.”

While McChrystal didn’t get his job back running the Afghan war, President Obama did appoint him to a new advisory job for military families.

The other candidate that some considered a dark horse to win in the category was Jane Mayer’s “Covert Operations,” on the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, head of the Koch Industries conglomerate, who were said to be bankrolling many of the organizations that spawned the Tea Party Movement of angry taxpayers.

Time Inc., the nation’s No. 1 magazine publisher, was shut out, as were Hearst and Meredith. The much smaller Rodale won one each for Men’s Health and Women’s Health. The empire of S.I. Newhouse Jr., at Condé Nast, was the biggest corporate winner on the night with four awards.

However, in general, it was not a good year for the New Yorker and its editor, David Remnick, who led with nine nominations but took home only one American Society of Magazine Editors’ Golden Elephant, or “Ellie” as the awards are known, — for “Letting Go” by Atul Gawande, which won for Public Interest.

Adam Moss, editor of New York, added to his hardware collection by carrying home a General Excellence Award for news, sports and entertainment magazines as well as an award for best magazine section for “strategist.”

National Geographic won two awards, including Magazine of the Year, which is handed out for the publication with the best digital and print editions, and for best single topic issue for “Water: Our ThirstyWorld.”

The awards ceremony was preceded by a moving tribute by Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, to photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who were slain while covering the war in Libya.