Adnews: A new awards program launched by AdNews, the 2009 Australian Magazine Awards (AMA), will recognize Australia’s best magazines across all publishers, including newspaper inserted titles.
In devising the AMA, AdNews recognized the need for Australia’s robust magazine industry to have a highly credible and sought-after awards program, particularly since the demise, after 11 years, of the annual MPA awards this year.
The AMA is open to all magazines including non-Magazines Publishers of Australia members, but titles must be ABC audited and have a Roy Morgan readership figure. The program will not solicit entries; rather the titles will be appraised on a set criteria by a team of independent judges, chaired by Steve Allen, industry pundit and MD of Fusion Strategy.
The judging criteria includes circulation and readership growth, advertising volume, front cover, editorial content, layout and design.
Awards will be handed out across 17 categories that cover all the magazine genres in addition to Launch of the Year and U-Turn of the Year. The AMA Magazine of the Year will be chosen from the category winners. The AMA Hall of Fame will recognize outstanding individual contributions to Australia’s magazine publishing industry.
Paul Carroll, group strategy manager at News Limited’s Newspaper Magazines, said the AMA would provide an “excellent opportunity for the industry to recognize the power of magazines as a medium”.
An objective, independent judging process based on the rigour of third party auditing were the take-out points of the AMA program for Simon Davies, head of print at OMD.
“These awards are going to be quite different to the MPA Awards in terms of having less subjectivity in some of the judging criteria,” Davies said. “It is important we encourage third-party auditing of titles, and where possible we try and support titles that do have that support.”
Gordon Towell, chief executive of the Audit Bureau of Circulation, agreed with Davies. “The Key to the AMA is the independent, open, transparent process that will produce winners judged on their merits.”
Online publisher Realview is the inaugural major sponsor for the AMA. Chief executive Richard Lindley said it is important to recognize the outstanding efforts put in by the magazines sector despite it “struggling in the current economic climate”. The fact the awards are being staged independently means they cannot be “swayed by any of the big players”, Lindley said.
AMA judging will take place on 1 October, with the winners announced in a special supplement published with the 6 November issue of AdNews.
