• Does the one-two punch of Time 100 and the National Magazine Awards underscore the uselessness of the newsweeklies? Scocca says yes. [NYO]
• Yes, Barney Calame sucks. No, that doesn't mean the Times should scrap the public editor experiment. [Slate]
• What readers will want in a news website, circa 2016. Surprisingly not on the list: Life lessons from Bonnie Fuller. [WSJ]
• Three staffers, including co-executive editor Mark Coleman, leave Star for Life & Style. Uh-oh. [WWD]
• Writers like soap operas. [NYO]

After the big show, the winners pose for the photos. One is not surprised that David Remnick and Jim Kelly end up in the middle while VQR's Ted Genoways is foisted to the side. One is surprised, however, that Esquire's David Granger (second from left) went long tie and wing collar, for the fratboy-as-groomsman look.

Does Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko really possess the best ass in magazinedom? With it sheathed in two layers of tuxedo, one can't really tell.

Reporting live to you from Jazz at Lincoln Center, your go-to venue for all media prom nights:

We're just hours away from tonight's big National Magazine Awards extravaganza, and Ellie Madness is reaching a fever pitch. By last night's deadline, 14 mag wags had entered our high-stakes pool. We've tallied their picks and are now pleased to present Gawker's wisdom-of-crowds predictions for tonight's winners. (Methodology: The wisdom-of-crowds pick for each category is the title that received a plurality of votes from the participating pickers. In categories where two or more titles tied for the lead, no winner is predicted.)

Why is Simon Dumenco mad this week? Ellie Madness, naturally. Well, not the madness itself; rather, he's mad about the Ellies. He makes several perfectly reasonable points about things fucked up with the magazine biz's big awards. His suggestions:

Sixth borough advocate Jessica Pressler has abandoned her dreams of legitimizing Philly and instead turned her attention to the revival of the zine, those lovingly crafted obscure magazines with miniscule circulations and offbeat content. While the zines of old were likely pasted together in basement bedroom (or Krucoff's apartment), nowadays they're high-design productions with significant cover prices. There's also heavy advertising, which defines the difference between these small, independent publications and their bigger counterparts. Swindle mag's Shepard Fairey explains:

We've got eight entries filed in the High-Stakes Ellies Pool, and at least a few more are on their way. Plus there's still more folks we're trying to guilt into participating. (Come on, Dumenco. What kind of Media Guy worthy of the name won't hazard a few guesses?) As an additional enticement, we're now pleased to introduce Gawker Ellie, above, the keynote prize for the winner. There will be other, intangible prizes — compliments, esteem — and even, perhaps, some additional tangible prizes. But Gawker Ellie is the real tribute to your prowess. She's an elephant, in tribute to the Calder stabile known as Ellie. She's floppy, because her muscles have atrophied from sitting in front of a computer all day. And she's sad-looking, because aren't we all a little sad? (Also: Stuffed elephants, harder to find than you think.)

Our breath gets more and more bated and the countdown to Ellie continues, and, oh boy, is the tension rising. Big news today about the High-Stakes Ellies Pool. First, we've added five more eligible contestants, all of whom we obviously should have thought of initially: Kit Seelye, Julie Bosman, and David Carr from the Times, Sarah Ellison from the Journal, and HuffPost media editor Rachel Sklar. That's a total of 20 eligible contestants, and we'll do our best to hector as many as possible into participating.

But the more I've thought about the subject and the more research I've done, the more I've realized that the print-vs.-online debate has become as much an outdated cliche as the old Ginger-vs.-Mary Ann barroom argument. Why choose? This is 2006 — why not just have a three-way?

Can you taste it in the air? Feel the excitement swirling around you? Oh, you know what it is, kids: The National Magazine Awards will be presented next Tuesday night, and New York has a bad case of Ellie fever. It's the biggest night of the year for the industry, and all around town mag stars are bursting with anticipation. They're picking up their borrowed jewelry from Harry Winston, they're getting final fittings on couture gowns from Armani, they're getting ready to face Joan and Melissa Rivers as they walk down that famous National Magazine Awards red carpet on their way into the show.

So the MPA has a daylong conference today at the Sheraton in midtown, "Magazines 24/7: Profiting in the Digital Age." Among the materials distributed was, as there is wont to be at such events, a 10-page list of attendees. And among that list of attendees was one lonely little boy listed without any affiliation at all.

This urgent announcement is just in from the PR Newswire press-release service:

• A discovery at Conde Nast: It's a good thing for print magazines to also have websites! "You gain a broader audience and more loyalty from your subscribers if you extend the experience into the Web," says Advance.net president Steven Newhouse. Who knew?

Click to enlarge.

• "Wenner is driving everyone crazy," a staffer tells Keith Kelly. "He keeps changing his mind." This time that refers to plans for the Rolling Stone 1,000th issue party. [NYP]
• Charlie Rose to undergo heart surgery in Paris. It'll be under general anesthetic, which will give the surgeons a chance to get a few words in. [Reuters via Yahoo]
• The biggest Katie question: What exactly is gravitas? [NYO]
• Business books are back. And — have you heard? — Elizabeth Spiers has a new Wall Street blog. [WWD]
• The Newspaper Guild's bid for a dozen erstwhile Knight Ridder papers is backed by Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. (Hmm, where have we heard of them before?) Bill Clinton in on the board of Yucapia. So Bill Clinton could end up as a newspaper owner, sort of. [NYSun]
• Lou Dobbs has discovered that "what works in cable television news is not an objective analysis of the day's events but hard-nosed, unstinting advocacy of a specific point of view." Who knew? [NYT]
• Time Inc. wants to be a web player now. If only the company could find a path. [WSJ]

We've long argued that if we were the ad exec running the Judaism account, our big selling point would be death. In the ground as quickly as possible, no open caskets, seven required days of having friends over for jokes and smoked fish — it's death done right. In that vein, then, at this time of frequent magland deaths, we must call attention to a recently deceased pub that has also done death right: Budget Living. Reports one vet, who sent along the above photo:

A job listing spotted on Craigslist:

We've been distracted away from monitoring Debbie Gibson's every waking moment — yes, she's still alive — long enough to get our hands on the first staff memo from newly appointed Atlantic editor James Bennet. It's not the best of news. William Langewiesche, the veteran national correspondent who reported and wrote the magazine's remarkable three-part series four years ago on the "unbuilding" of the World Trade Center, is leaving for Vanity Fair. We were all set to make a joke about how much we're looking forward to his in-depth pieces on tea parties thrown by Princess Michael of Kent, but then we got to the second paragraph of Bennet's memo. It seems Cullen Murphy, the managing editor who ably ran The Atlantic from Michael Kelly's death in April 2003 until his magazine was moved out from under him to Washington last year, will also be joining VF. He'll be a part-time editor.

God bless you, every one of you. "If anyone is familiar with this alleged Virginia Review and wants to provide a few grafs of description, we'd be much indebted," we begged of you earlier. "And we imagine not a few of our readers would be, too." And then, like the angels you are, you all jumped to attention and gave us our answer. Now we'll be able to enjoy the full Ellies experience. (One hopes the Times will launch a David Carr blog to cover the runup.) Herewith, an explanation of what the fuck The Virginia Quarterly Review is, fresh from the Gawker emailbag: