On Wednesday The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism presented the 2004 National Magazine Awards, the "Ellies", the industry's most prestigious editorial honor, to 16 print and online magazines across 21 categories.

Not one genuine blog was nominated for the only non-print category, General Excellence Online.

The 2004 National Magazine Award winners are:

• Newsweek for General Excellence (over 2,000,000 circulation)

• Popular Science for General Excellence (1,000,000 to 2,000,000 circulation)

• Gourmet for General Excellence (500,000 to 1,000,000 circulation)

• Budget Living for General Excellence (250,000 to 500,000 circulation)

• Chicago Magazine for General Excellence (100,000 to 250,000 circulation)

• Aperture for General Excellence (under 100,000 circulation)

• Men's Health for Personal Service

• Consumer Reports for Leisure Interests

• Rolling Stone for Reporting

• The New Yorker for Public Interest

• The New Yorker for Feature Writing

• Esquire for Profile Writing

• The New Yorker for Essays

• New York for Columns and Commentary

• Esquire for Reviews and Criticism

• The Oxford American for Single-topic Issue

• Esquire for Design

• City for Photography

• W for Photo Portfolio/Photo Essay

• Esquire for Fiction

• CNET News.com for General Excellence Online

While there is a tremendous amount to discuss about the winners and nominees, I want to focus for the moment on just the General Excellence Online award as I will cross-post this to The Nanopublishing Weblog rather than just The Magazine Design Weblog. I'm sure I'll have more comments for the Magazine Design Weblog later.

While I agree CNET News.com has excellent and timely coverage, and it is worthy of an award, I would much rather have seen the General Excellence Online Ellie go to a blog. The category description for General Excellence Online reads:  "This category recognizes outstanding magazine Internet sites, as well as online-only magazines and Weblogs that have a significant amount of original content."

I would rather have seen ASME make a show of faith (or at least good will) in the Blogosphere by awarding the category to a blog. While Slate was among the finalists, which also included BeliefNet, The Chronicles of Higher Education, National Geographic Online, Sky & Telescope.com, and, of course, CNET News.com, it looks like a token nomination. Slate is also a safe nomination:  It won the category last year. Additionally, Slate is fed by Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, NBC… Slate isn't an independent. Maybe that's my point. I think the Ellie should have gone to a truly excellent blog that wasn't born with a billion dollar spoon in its mouth.

Slate is the only blog or blog-like agency to ever win the General Excellence Online award. For the eight years the award has been given, the winners have been:

• 1997 Money

• 1998 The Sporting News Online

• 1999 Cigar Aficionado

• 2000 Business Week Online

• 2001 U.S. News Online

• 2002 National Geographic Magazine Online

• 2003 Slate

• 2004 CNET News.com

The eligibility requirements for the General Excellence Online require a nominee to "have original content and a distinct editorial voice." That describes nearly every blog I know. So why weren't more blogs on the list? Why has Slate been the only one for at least three years now?

It would seem that ASME, which is comprised almost exclusively of traditional print media professionals, is snubbing its nose at bloggers. That's ok. It only confirms that blogs are seen as a threat by traditional news media. The lack of credibility given to blogs by traditional media in fact lends credit to blogging. It does, however, lend to the deficiency in public awareness of blogs.

With the commercialization of blogs under way (see here, and here), I wonder how long it will be before ASME is forced to include blogs in among their nominees and what future National Magazine Awards will bring.