Newsweek wins top magazine award

Newsweek magazine won the top honours today at the US National Magazine Awards ceremony, beating its rival Time and others for the general excellence prize in the over-two million circulation category.

Entertainment Weekly, Vibe and National Geographic Adventure also won prizes for general excellence in their respective circulation categories. The New Yorker, a perennial winner, took the prizes for fiction, essay and profile writing.

The Atlantic Monthly also won three awards, including the reporting award for a story on ‘‘The Crash of EgyptAir 990,’’ the public interest award for a story on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and feature writing for a story about a teenager’s struggle with muscular dystrophy.

In citing Newsweek for receiving the top award for its coverage of September 11, the judges said the magazine ‘‘demonstrated that the weekly news magazine is not only a vital form, but something of a miracle. The magazine offered instant perspective on incomprehensible horror.’’

The awards, which are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors, were presented today at a ceremony in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.