Today’s newsletter is sponsored by TFS subscriber Haile McCollum on behalf of Thomasville, Georgia
Everyone knows the way to Carnegie Hall. But how do you get to the Ellies?
Turns out, there are two routes to the awards ceremony. You can win a National Magazine Award, as The Food Section did, with a whole lot of hard work and just as much luck. Or you can bid on a ticket.
As an Ellie recipient, The Food Section received two tickets to the Tuesday, June 3 reception in New York City. I plan to use one of them, as the event invitation very nearly instructed, asking winners to provide “names and email addresses of your guests, including presumably you.”
What I’m sure the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) didn’t presume was TFS auctioning off its plus-one.
As a reminder, The Food Section is the smallest media outlet on the winners list by some order of magnitude: Other honorees include The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine. My guess is million-dollar companies don’t have to worry about footing the bill for a Big Apple trip, especially since many of them would only have to pop for subway fare. But we didn’t budget for this jaunt up north, so now I’m offering you the chance to be my Ellies date.
(Admittedly, this is not among TFS’ most forward-looking schemes: When you Google “date auction” these days, the search yields links to a Rotary Club chapter and a personal safety page.)
You may have heard that ASME scrapped its famously swanky gala this year. Apparently, even the well-heeled mags have spending limits, and they were tested by buying costly dinner tickets for dozens of contributors who went home empty-handed. The good news is the ceremony still features free drinks, appetizers, and media celebrities—although seated in rows instead of at tables set with Champagne.
Now, access to all that can be yours, along with the fun of seeing where your support has taken TFS. The auction winner will also be my special guest at a celebratory lunch with the publication’s biggest boosters at a dim sum parlor chosen by Grace Young, the force behind the Save Chinatowns movement.
What’s the value of this package? Well, folks who don’t belong to ASME can purchase an awards presentation ticket for $350. And I’d imagine even the price of dumplings has gone up. So, if you add that to the promised pride and excitement…shall we call it a zillion dollars?
Of course, bidders are the ones who decide what the prize is worth. I’ve set the starting bid at $500, but it’s up to you where the auction goes. We’ll close the bidding on Monday, May 19 at 12 noon Eastern. Good luck!
p.s. In case you’re concerned, my husband–whose name is Ken, not Ben–is on board with this auction. He has a scheduling conflict (and zero interest in sitting through an awards presentation, although he’d absolutely accompany me if I insisted upon it. If that’s not love, what is?)
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