The 2008 Majestic Awards

Drum roll please, here are the 2008 Majestic Awards for debate Magazine Awesomeness

Most Enthusiastic Contributor - Adam Hart. No one gets as excited about writing stuff as this guy. His Rambo review almost jumps out on the page and slaps you. It's just a shame his photography skills weren't up to his cooking prowess.

Best Looking Contributor - Tim Lambourne. You make the rest of us look like we belong in a circus. And not a legitimate circus either; one that has no licence and only travels at night. Do us all a favour and wear a mask you selfish bastard.

Biggest Music Snob - Mike Atkins. While he might be a great music reviewer and writer and has a bright future working for Rolling Stone (maybe), his complete lack of respect for Muse is totally unacceptable.

Contributor of the Yeah - Looking back over the year there are two picks for this bad boy. First of all there's Andrew Vuong who wrote more articles for this magazine than any other contributor and all were pretty good quality. He didn't even let his exchange to Florida slow him down.

The other contender is Michael Botur, our cartoonist/sometime cover designer and the contributor who featured in the most issues of the year with something in all but two. This is too hard. You both win. How you divide up the imaginary award is up to you.

Most Awesome Contributor - For entertainment value alone, it goes to annaloren and Sojo, our fashion guru and mojo expert respectively. They never failed to make me smile, except when they were late getting articles in which led to some not so polite texts from me. Also, their 2am drunken phone calls help justify my policy of not giving my cell number to contributors.

Most Anti-Climatic Contributor - Josh Gale. At the start of the year, Josh came to me with a whole bunch of great ideas for articles. Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule, none ever eventuated into articles. He did manage two towards the end of the year, one about Hare Krishna and another about Political Footy, so it wasn't all bad. Oh well, Josh a cool guy and has given me some sweet recipe ideas so I'll forgive him.

Best Cover - Like kangaroo steak, this was a very tough one but I have to give it to the Handy Pocket Guide to Dancing Like a White Person by Sarah Denton. Ethnic stereotyping has never looked better.

Best Editor - The gorgeous Justice Irontrap takes out this honour for her one great issue before she was "accidentally" run over by a steam roller at the beach. This posthumous award is a tribute to the memories and immense bitterness she left behind.

Worst Editor - The easiest award of the bunch, Ryan has taken the art of sucking to a whole new level, and gets extra credit for referring to himself in the third person just now. However I did have to do the first six or so issues by myself (well, with a designer too) so I think I deserve some credit. But by Issue 10 I was just phoning it in.

Best Editorial Writer - Pierre, the French leprechaun that lives in my pocket who tells me what to write. I owe a great deal to the little fella.

Best Issue - Number 3, with the graffiti art cover, without doubt. An issue in which the only thing I wrote was the editorial and all our new enthusiastic contributors were yet to be jaded by my lack of respect for them. It had Jared's Subway: Up my ass, Meg Ellwood's Canadian's Guide to NZ, Jamie Melbourne's great Culture Stock column, and me with muscles. Just what every great magazine needs. The Citizen Kane of debate 2008.

Worst Issue - For more than one reason it goes to Issue 8, which was the one that had the ‘Savvy?' cover and Uni Games spread. No other issue in the year provoked as much stress in me as this one. One of the things I like about being editor is that I am in control of everything, but this issue took that away from me with the Uni Games stuff designed and written by people I don't know. Because of this it didn't flow properly, there were issues with the photos and factual errors in the article. The end result: a broken toe and prize for worst issue.

Biggest Fuck Up - Too many to name. Confusing Wade McKinnon and Michael Witt, getting the title wrong on Andrew Vuong's Folole Muliaga article, getting a tennis player's name wrong in the Uni Games spread, using someone's photos without permission, forgetting to put people's ads in, the odd Caption Comp winner omitted, giving myself credit for an article I had absolutely nothing to do with, and oh so many tiny other things I can't remember.

While on the topic, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the spelling and grammar errors. Basically we only have 3 days to produce the whole magazine and often get articles on the day we go to print, which gives us very little time to sub. And seriously, even though I'm a card carrying member of the Grammar Nazis, by Thursday afternoon after the stress the magazine induces, I just don't care anymore. That is why there are one or two (or more) mistakes here and there. For that I apologise.

The $100 Celebrity Challenge winner - Andrew Vuong. That's right, this award actually has a prize! At the start of the year I sent out an email to contributors to see who could get an interview with the most famous person. Andrew got Rodney Hide, Russel Norman, and Peter Dunne. His John Key one didn't count because it was an email one, and the Franz Ferdinand and Jamie Kennedy ones didn't count because I set them up. I hope next year we can get George Clooney.

Lost Opportunities

Good ideas for articles that never eventuated:

• Jared's riding around with the police for a night to see what goes down on patrol
• An investigation in the Orion Conspiracy
• Something, anything, about China and the Olympics
• A battle of the decades to find the best era in recent history
• What will happen when the oil runs out?
• Media censorship and how we don't know the extent to which it exists
• How to tie a tie

Articles that were submitted but not printed:

• A few more about Michael Teoh, business student overachiever of the year, but we thought he was hogging all the news space and making the rest of us look bad. Seriously, how can one student achieve so much?
• A few news articles that we just never had room for, which is a shame. I always feel bad about not printing things that people have spent time doing. Ironically in the second semester we always had a shortage of news. If you sent something in and it didn't get published, I'm sorry. Really I am.

• Orange one by Cole Diffin
• Some sort of warrior one by Alexandra Pople
• Billboard one by Lauren