"How does judging work?"
We know: the judging process for the National Magazine Awards can seem complicated. Our program is
bilingual, so we need English, French and bilingual judges. Our categories include written, visual and
integrated content, so we need judges who are editors, art directors, photographers and subject specialists.
We do our best to avoid conflicts of interest, so our search for judges stretches across the continent and
sometimes beyond. And it's all done with volunteers and the support of a small number of paid contract
facilitators. We've worked hard to ensure a fair and transparent process, but we know there's still room for
improvement.
We're taking steps to make our awards program even more transparent. You can read complete list of rules, a description of our judging process and the Foundation's Governance Policy. We're committed to surveying the
community—that means you!—on an annual basis, just following the awards submissions, to uncover any issues
with our processes so that we can address them before the next year's program. We've instituted electronic
filing of scores so that we can eliminate the potential for errors in score transcription. We also conduct
conference calls between judges in large categories so that judges can discuss their thoughts and scoring
with each other before submitting final scores.
We know there are more ways we can continue to improve the program, so our efforts will not stop here. As
always, those efforts are driven by feedback from the magazine community. If you have thoughts to share,
please email us at staff[at]magazine-awards[dot]com.
Also, if you're interested in serving as a judge, or you would like to volunteer for our Judging
Committee, please get in touch with us.
We are committed to ensuring that the Awards reflect excellence—both in who wins and in how those
winners are selected.
Patrick Walsh
President
National Magazine Awards Foundation
