The Marshall Project has won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, Special Interest, at the 2024 National Magazine Awards.
This is the third time The Marshall Project has received this prestigious award from the American Society of Magazine Editors. Last year, the organization also received the General Excellence award in the Special Interest category, and in 2017, it won the same prize in the Literature, Science and Politics slot. It has been nominated for General Excellence seven of the past eight years.
The Marshall Project also won an ASME Award for Best Digital Illustration for the feature “In New York Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Prisoners Rarely Get Fired.” The illustrations were by Dion MBD; design and development were by Bo-Won Keum, Katie Park and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón; and art direction was by Bo-Won Keum, Celina Fang and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón.
The Marshall Project also earned two other National Magazine Award nominations in 2024. Staff writer Beth Schwartzapfel’s narrative podcast “Violation” on Jacob Wideman –– which she hosted and reported in partnership with WBUR –– was a finalist in the podcasting category. And Cary Aspinwall’s collaboration with reporters from AL.com, Mississippi Today, The Frontier, and The Post and Courier documenting the criminalization of pregnancy in the post-Roe landscape was a finalist in the Public Interest category.
“We’re truly honored to win this award two years in a row, and it’s a testament to the whole Marshall Project team,” said Susan Chira, editor-in-chief since 2019. “Their commitment to producing fearless, fact-based journalism about the U.S. criminal justice system is unmatched. We are also grateful to be in the company of so many other talented finalists and awardees.”
The 59th annual American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Awards ceremony was held on April 2 at Terminal 5 in New York City. 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. Winners for the ASME Award for Fiction, the ASME Awards for Design, Photography and Illustration, and the ASME NEXT Awards for Journalists Under 30 were also announced last night.
The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.
First presented in 1966, the National Magazine Awards are sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and are administered by ASME. Every year, more than 250 magazines and websites enter the awards, submitting 1,000-plus entries.
The winner of each National Magazine Award receives a copper “Ellie,” modeled on the symbol of the awards, Alexander Calderʼs 1942 stabile “Elephant Walking.”
