The Marshall Project has won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, Special Interest, at the 2023 National Magazine Awards. This is the second time The Marshall Project has received this prestigious award from the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2017, the organization was recognized for general excellence in the Literature, Science, and Politics category.
This year, The Marshall Project received the award for its signature investigative reporting that spanned all corners of the U.S. criminal justice system, including coverage on topics such as the prosecutions of pregnant women with addictions and a violent prison unit in Illinois, which resulted in a federal investigation and the closing of the unit.
The winning entry also included The Marshall Project’s effort to reach more incarcerated audiences, corresponding with people behind bars about the ways they make money in prison, and publishing News Inside, its award-winning publication that circulates to approximately 900 prisons and jails.
The Marshall Project also earned the ASME Award for Best Digital Illustration for the piece, “Who’s Really Cycling In and Out of Cleveland’s Courts?” which was part of The Marshall Project - Cleveland’s Testify project that used thousands of court records to explore the lopsided outcomes in the Cuyahoga County court system. Rapapawn created the animation, which was art directed by Elan Kiderman Ullendorff, Celina Fang and Raghu Vadarevu.
The Marshall Project earned two other National Magazine Award nominations in addition to General Excellence. Staff writer Maurice Chammah’s “Anatomy of a Murder Confession” — done in collaboration with the Dallas Morning News — was a finalist in the Reporting category. The Marshall Project also was a finalist for Design for the projects “Anatomy of a Murder Confession,” “Testify” and “The Rise and Fall of a Prison Town Queen.”
In addition to the ASME award for Best Digital Illustration, The Marshall Project was named a finalist in Best News and Entertainment Story for photographs by Kirsten Luce for “No Place for a Child.” The story, by Anna Flagg and Julia Preston, examined the conditions under which minors are detained along the border with Mexico. The news organization was also a finalist for Best Illustrated Story for “Judges Have Real Power in Cleveland. Who’s Voting for Them?,” with illustrations by John G.
“We are thrilled that the breadth of our work has been recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and we take pride in our mission to provide fact-based reporting that also takes into account the voices and perspective of those affected by the system,” said Susan Chira, editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project. “We are honored to have our work recognized among so many worthy organizations.”
The 58th annual American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Awards ceremony was held on March 28 at Terminal 5 in New York City. The awards honor media organizations ranging from magazines and newspapers to websites, audio and video production companies, for editorial excellence in categories such as Reporting, Feature Writing, Podcasting and Video.
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. This year, 243 national and regional media organizations entered the National Magazine Awards and submitted 426 print entries, 526 digital entries and 121 multiplatform entries. Winners received “Ellies,” or elephant-shaped statuettes modeled on Alexander Calder’s sculpture, “Elephant Walking,” created in 1942.
