Chicago magazine is the recent winner of seven Lisagor Awards and one Herman Kogan Media Award.
The Chicago Headline Club honored Chicago with seven Lisagor Awards at its annual awards ceremony on Friday, May 3. The organization, which is the largest Society of Professional Journalists chapter in the country, gives these awards to the Chicago journalists who have produced the best work of the year across all media outlets: newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and online. Chicago received the most Lisagor Awards of any magazine in Chicago, winning in the following categories:
- Feature writing ("The $53 Million Bamboozle" by Bryan Smith)
- In-depth reporting ("The $53 Million Bamboozle" by Bryan Smith)
- Arts and culture reporting ("Fall Culture Guide" edited by Cassie Walker Burke and Emmet Sullivan)
- Political and government reporting ("Lawbreakers, Lawmakers" by David Bernstein and Noah Isackson)
- Education reporting ("Street Fighter" by Ben Goldberger)
- Sports story ("You Gotta Be Bleepin Me!" by Bryan Smith)
- Design ("Chicagoans of the Year" designed by Bryan Erickson)
On Tuesday, May 7, the Chicago Bar Association awarded a Herman Kogan Media Award to Chicago magazine writer Bryan Smith. Smith won in the Meritorious Achievement category for Print Features or Series for his story “The $53 Million Bamboozle” about Rita Crundwell, the former comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, who became the biggest municipal embezzler in U.S. history. The Chicago Bar Association gives these prizes for the year’s best journalism relating to law, government, and justice.
Chicago was also recently named a finalist for a National Magazine Award in the Reporting category for “Lawmakers, Lawbreakers” by David Bernstein and Noah Isackson, a story which exposed the unseemly collusion of politicians and gang members in Chicago.