Some Good News—Sactown Magazine Edition
As Stephen King once wrote, “There is no bad time for good news,” and with that, we’re happy to report that Sactown received some very good news recently.
A few weeks back, we were thrilled to win Best City Magazine at the 68th annual Maggie Awards, as well as Best Cover for our 2019 “Best of the City” cover design.
Then on Thursday, May 21, at the 2020 National City & Regional Magazine Awards, Sactown took home the Herb Lipson Award for Column Excellence. Named in tribute to the late, legendary publisher-owner of Boston and Philadelphia magazines, the recognition was for Sactown co-editor Rob Turner’s 2019 essays—one about reimagining the Sacramento Zoo; another concerning the renovation of the Community Center Theater; and the third about the design for the planned I Street Bridge replacement. Turner’s first article about the bridge pushed the city to think bigger and bolder than the original plan, ultimately leading to an international design competition. The judges called the pieces “carefully considered, elegantly crafted essays” that are “a dose of wisdom and civic engagement that shows locals the best way forward.”
We were also named finalists in two categories: Cover Excellence for the three covers shown below, which the judges described as “flat-out bold—bold in color selection, bold in typography and bold in cleanliness"; and Best Profile for Sactown editor-at-large Hillary Louise Johnson’s profile of Sacramento-raised scholar Cornel West. The judges commented that her “skillful writing and many pivotal and carefully chosen details elevate the story of this seminal genius.” (Last year, we won in the same category for Johnson's deep dive on author William T. Vollmann.)
More than 100 judges selected the City & Regional Magazine Award finalists and winners. They included representatives from publications such as The Atlantic, Dwell, Fast Company, Food & Wine, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, The New York Times, New York, Sports Illustrated, Sunset, Time, Vanity Fair and The Washington Post, as well as professors from the Missouri School of Journalism, which organized the judging.
