I just got an email from my colleague Ed Carr in London, who has been attending the gala dinner at an annual ceremony where they give out these swanky journalism awards. It appears that The Economist cleaned up tonight, with four awards. (The announcement is not up on the official site yet.)
Philip Coggan won, not one, but two! Fiammetta Rocco, our delightful books & arts editor, won another. (For a profile, as she just informed me in another email, of a subject “who caused me much amusement when I discovered that he uses a condom with 39 holes in it attached to the end of a Hoover to make his finest works of art.” Must investigate.) And the fourth award, I’m happy to say, appears to me mine.
Years ago, I won another one of those. For some reason, I never get to go to the dinner, though, so it is always Ed who accepts on my behalf. That means he gets his picture taken with the trophy. When I met my wife in Hong Kong and she googled me, she came upon that picture and, because he and I sort of look alike, forwarded it to her friends as a way of introducing her new boyfriend.
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
Huzzah. (a trophy? really?)
Congratulations! Loved the personal story. Would you tell us the subject of your award winning article? I would like to read it myself, can you link to it?
Gosh, I go to work, trying to earn a living. When I come back, and log on, you–on a deadline day at that– have uploaded three entries and Mr. C has beat me to the congratulations. What does he do by day? Ahhh…those governmental scientist types.
Congratulations, Andreas.
One more thought. Since Fiametta Rocco speaks 6 languages (how does one do that?), and is the Economist’s book editor, your book will definitely be translated into Swahili.
🙂
Congratulations on winning the fourth award. It’ll be the beginning of many more, I feel sure.
As to this year’s awards, were you, perchance, the only American on the Economist’s team, to win one?
If so, it assumes an added significance.
Thanks, guys!
Stephanie, I’ll post the link here in the comments once they put it up tomorrow. But I have to tell you that the process by which these things get nominated and chosen always perplexes me. It’s not one I myself would have necessarily chosen to pick out from my pieces.
Cheri, Fiammetta is a pretty amazing woman in many ways. You’d love her. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her at dinner both nights at our recent Danesfield retreat and the time went really fast. But speaking six languages is indeed an impertinence.
Phillip Phogg, yes, I am the only American to win one. And the only German as well. All Britain will be scandalized tomorrow. 😉
Belated but no less heartfelt congrats!
Perhaps you won’t be the only American next year – since The Economist is so stridently libertarian – maybe some of your esteemed colleagues will vote with their feet and join the land of the freer.
Without bylines, how do they know who to give the award to?
“.. the land of the freer..” I don’t think all of my colleagues will voluntarily move to … Hong Kong. 😉
Balcs, the process for these things is the following (and I’m not a big fan of the process): Editors at the various publications nominate pieces. So the “pool” is determined by editors (writers don’t submit their own pieces). Then the publication fills out an application form, and the author’s name is on that, of course.
The judges then choose from all the submissions.