Madison Magazine last won the coveted general excellence award from CRMA in 2020. The magazine staff will find out if they've won general excellence at an awards ceremony in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 5. Award placement for the Milwaukee Press Club contest will be announced at an awards dinner on May 12. Here's what content was named in the state competition:
An American family and a Ukrainian family were separated by 5,000 miles but were forever united as friends. Then the war upended all of their lives. As one Ukrainian mother and her two children seek refuge in their friends’ already full Fitchburg home, both families are left to grapple with what happened, who was left behind and what comes next. Veteran news anchor Susan Siman first brought this story to News 3 Now viewers with her special report, “From Kyiv to Madison.” But there was so much more to the story that it led to her first feature for Madison Magazine.
Best Short Hard Feature Story: "Borderline Solutions" written by Maggie Ginsberg
On June 14, 10 days before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and all but eliminated abortion access in Wisconsin, Dr. Dennis Christensen bought a $350,000 building just over the state border in Rockford, Illinois. The writing had been on the wall long before the May 2 leak that telegraphed the court’s decision, and a consortium of local providers, activists and philanthropists — including Christensen, a mostly retired Milwaukee- and Madison-area gynecologist now in his 80s — had been quietly preparing for months. Now a newly formed “Rockford Family Planning Foundation” is leading the effort to open a state-of-the-art abortion and full-spectrum gynecological care clinic inside the Christensen-owned building.
Middleton’s David Tan used to fly a military rescue helicopter. Now the retired pilot spends his free time (and his own dime) flying rescue animals to their new homes. Since retiring from a 40-year career as a military, professional and private pilot, Tan has flown more than 360 rescue dogs to safety. He’s also helped rescue 23 skeptical cats, three frostbitten goats, one scruffy potbelly pig and even a bat destined for a nature preserve in Ohio. “Naturally, we named him Bruce,” Tan says, poker-faced — a reference to Batman’s true identity, Bruce Wayne. (Editor’s note: if anything about this story sounds familiar, it’s because numerous national clickbait sites, including Bored Panda and Upworth, scraped the article and passed it off as their own under different bylines. Yes, it was incredibly frustrating. Yes, it’s basically legal.)
Before he was “SNL” megastar Chris Farley, he was a 21-year-old kid trying to find his voice at open mic night at The Comedy Cellar on Madison’s State Street. Ahead of a meteoric rise to fame as one of America’s funniest, he cut his teeth here, in his hometown. Writer Kurt Stream — who penned Madison Magazine’s award-winning “Nirvana in Madison” story in 2021 — places readers right inside the Madison origin story with details of the late comedian’s early days. The posthumous profile is focused on the rise of Farley as opposed to his well-documented fall. “The fall is prevalent in every article and documentary about him since his death, and there’s a lot of sadness there,” says Stream. “I wanted readers to focus on the one-in-a-lifetime talent that he was and experience the same kind of joy they feel when they watch his movies or old ‘SNL’ sketches.” This story, which falls on the 25th anniversary of the comedian’s death, was also paired with a custom cover illustration by a local artist.
Best Illustration, Cartoon or Animation: Chris Farley cover illustration by Kristin Shafel
Kristin Shafel
“I thought it was a photo, but it’s a drawing?!” read one comment. Another: “This blows my mind.” They were talking about the custom illustration on the cover of the December issue, showing an expressive Chris Farley drawn in pencil by local illustrator Kristin Shafel. Creative Director Tim Burton knew he wanted a striking image of a young Farley from his Midwestern era, chronicled in the posthumous profile written by Kurt Stream. Burton landed on Farley’s headshot from his time at The Second City in Chicago, but decided to work with Shafel to create a brand new piece of Farley art. The detailed lines of Shafel’s piece bring an added dimension to the reference shot in a way that somehow shows even more emotion on the young comedian’s face while still being a near identical interpretation of the original.
Best Feature Photograph: Bird Man photo by Patrick Stutz
By Patrick Stutz
In the perfect companion to this profile on BIPOC Birding Club founder, photographer and passionate birder Dexter Patterson, photographer Patrick Stutz set up a studio shoot in which he had Patterson pose holding his binoculars peeking out between the branches of trees against a blue backdrop. Stutz then photoshopped in real birds from actual photographs that Patterson himself had taken on his birding expeditions.
Best Overall Design
Madison Magazine Creative Director Tim Burton leads a team of one full-time and two part-time designers (Emily Culp, Carol Shufro and Sarah Frautschi) who work together to create monthly magazines that are visually beautiful and intuitive from cover to cover. These three issues showcase stunning portraits, impactful illustrations, smart font and layout choices and feature photographs that highlight of-the-moment art direction.
Creative director Tim Burton and freelance writer Kurt Stream put their heads together to collect and consider as many Chris Farley images as they could for this feature. They spent numerous hours sourcing photos and getting permission for many of the seldom-seen and in some cases never-before-seen photos that were included in the piece. Burton chose to run the Polaroid image showing the entire frame instead of cropped, pairing it with a very bold and heavy type to match Farley’s immense presence and personality. The headline “Before the World Met Chris” was all that was needed for this internationally recognized profile subject. Each photo cutline was carefully crafted with help from Stream to guide the reader through the package’s main entry points.
After more than 40 years of telling Madison’s stories through newspaper columns, magazine articles and more than a dozen books, it should come as no surprise that Doug Moe can spin a darn good tale. But what is surprising is how consistently and well he does so, churning out near-weekly features for his Doug Moe’s Madison blog (exclusive to madisonmagazine.com) that are often our most read stories online. Not only is Moe arguably the city’s most trusted scribe — locals are constantly contacting him to be their voice — he even manages to scoop the local newspapers with remarkable regularity. In 2022, he presented content unique in our market on hyperlocal topics (like the closing of a beloved 69-year-old supper club) as well as local angles on stories of national importance (like a Madison-connected insider to the capitol insurrection). The level of trust and respect that Madison Magazine readers have in Moe is second only to that of his remarkable output. He’s a treasure and a veritable institution, and the fact that his high-quality stories can only be found online brings added value to the magazine’s offerings and helps make us a go-to source for news that matters.
BONUS: In the Milwaukee Press Club's collegiate category, Madison Magazine's editorial intern Celia Hiorns is also up for an award:
