Quality Rewarded
Congratulations to Jonathan Rauch, who won a well-deserved National Magazine Award for his excellent columns in National Journal. (Reason Online reprints his columns and maintains an archive going back to 1998.)
This award is a Very Big Deal, though you'd never know it from National Journal or the anything-but-self-aggrandizing Mr. Rauch. (If you crossed him with Camille Paglia, you'd get a normal level of writerly self-promotion.) The National Magazine Awards are like the Pulitzers or the Oscars--only with a much tighter connection between actual merit and winning.
Demonstrating a refreshing range, the specific columns honored were on gay marriage, McCain-Feingold, and the political risks of the "ownership society".