BACKPACKER Wins 3 National Magazine Awards!

Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to thank the Academy—or in this case, the Society. Last night, BACKPACKER won three National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors: General Excellence Online, Personal Service Online for our Maps Project, and Best Essay for Tracy Ross’s “The Source of All Things.”

This is basically the highest honor awarded by our industry, so needless to say, this means a lot to us and our moms. In fact, BACKPACKER tied with Wired, The New Yorker, and Esquire for most wins, and we won 3 out of 4 awards for which we were nominated (we missed out on General Excellence in our print category, but that’s OK…we won last year. For a full list of nominees and winners, go here).

Editor-in-chief Jon Dorn, map editor Kris Wagner, design director Matthew Bates, executive editor Dennis Lewon, and senior editor Tracy Ross represented BACKPACKER at the ceremony, a cocktail-attire affair which went down last night at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew followed various Twitter feeds with rapt attention back home at Boulder Beer.

All of which might make you wonder: What exactly do you get if you win a National Magazine Award? You get a trophy, of course—this one’s called an “Ellie” for it’s elephant-by-way-of-Alexander-Calder shape. But it’s good for much more than just collecting dust on an office shelf. Editor Jon Dorn demonstrated last night:



Two things come to mind: 1) Never let it be said that we don’t love red meat, and 2) I’d like to see someone do that with a Grammy.

—Ted Alvarez

We’d also like to take a mo’ to thank you, our BACKPACKER online and print readers, for holding us to high standards and helping us make the magazine and website all you want it to be. Keep giving us such great feedback. You guys are truly righteous.