You’ll allow us a bit of back patting here. City magazines like D all over the country belong to an organization called the City and Regional Magazine Association, which last night held its 46th annual awards shindig, in St. Louis. Your hometown kids fared well. Without bogging down in circulation stuff (we don’t compete with Texas Monthly in certain categories because they are so much larger), we took home more awards than any other magazine in the country—except TxMo. We as a company won six awards, including the big one, General Excellence. The folks at TxMo won seven. Zac Crain and Matt Goodman both won individual awards for their writing. So did Rosin Saez, who recently left us to take a job at something called Thrillist.
The contest is managed on behalf of CRMA by the University of Missouri School of Journalism, which recruits judges from publications such as Esquire, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other national publications. Here’s what those judges had to say:
“D Magazine’s six wins included Excellence in Writing for its November issue, and judges described the writing as ‘smart and honest throughout, with imaginative service and witty gossip.’ Zac Crain’s first-place Civic Journalism story, ‘The Fair Park Lie,’ shed light on a tragic story of racism and how ‘Dallas failed Black families by taking their land to build a seldom-used parking lot.’ D Magazine received two awards for online categories, including Online Column for Matt Goodman’s ‘Local News’ and E-Newsletter for SideDish. D Magazine won Ancillary: Weddings with a summer issue that ‘was comprehensive, diverse and filled with ideas and well-reported personal stories that touched the heart.’ General Excellence 2 judges praised D Magazine and wrote: ‘John Steinbeck once described Texas as a State of Mind. That State of Mind is on full display on the pages of D Magazine.'”
Those of us who stayed behind in Dallas kept up with the proceedings last night in a monster Teams chat that would be funny to cut and paste into this post because it included lots of GIFs and references to Prince lyrics that would confuse you. I’ll just end with a communication I had this morning with one of people in attendance. Knowing this person had an early flight back to Dallas, I texted the colleague and asked how the winner was feeling. The response: “That terrifying middle where you can’t tell if you snuck away without a hangover or if you’re still drunk.” That sounds about right.
On a personal note, I am not humbled to be part of this gifted, hardworking team. Congrats to everyone involved—and there are a lot of people involved, from the sales folks who make the money we spend on manuscripts and photography, to the production crew that gets the pages printed, to the crafty IT department that kept us connected and plugging away in a pandemic.
And, finally, thank you to everyone in North Texas who gives us time and attention. We do it all with you in mind, guys, to make Dallas even better.
Cheers.
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