LOWELL THOMAS TRAVEL JOURNALISM COMPETITION 
 
 28 Years of Rewarding Journalists for Outstanding Work in the Field 
 
 
 
 
 
 2010 Lowell Thomas Winners 
 
 
 
 Afar Magazine, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle 
 
 Earn 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Honors 
 
 SATW Foundation president David Molyneaux, right, and Foundation administrator Mary Lu Abbott, left, congratulate Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award winners Spud Hilton, Kit Bernardi representing Midwest Living magazine and Laura Del Rosso. 
 
 Afar, a new magazine, and the venerable Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle win top honors as the best travel publications in North America in the 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. 
 
 Among other winners, Outside magazine wins seven individual awards, Islands magazine, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times four and the New York Times, Afar and National Geographic Traveler three. 
 
 BudgetTravel.com wins gold for the best online travel journalism site. 
 
 Travel Journalist of the Year is Andrew McCarthy, who won the gold for his freelance writing in some of North America’s best travel magazines. 
 
 This is the 26th year of the annual Lowell Thomas competition, overseen by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. The awards, recognized as the most prestigious in the field, were announced in Leipzig, Germany, at the annual convention of the Society of American Travel Writers, the professional organization of travel journalists and communicators. 
 
 The competition, for work from spring 2009 to spring 2010, drew 1,161 entries. Judging was done by faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Foundation awards more than $20,000 in prize money to winners. 
 
 See the full story about this year’s results. 
 
 Individual Award Winners: 
 
 With articles in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appétit, Islands, Afar and other magazines, actor-writer Andrew McCarthy took the top individual honors as 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. 
 
 The Washington Post asked 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year: 
 
 "If you could win only one award in your lifetime, which one would it be: an Emmy, Oscar, Razzie or Lowell Thomas?" 
 
 Andrew McCarthy: 
 
 'I'll take them all.' (Read the entire story...CLICK HERE) 
 
 
 
 
 
 “Word by word, paragraph by paragraph, entry by entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way — by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories,” said the judge. McCarthy’s subjects were wide ranging, from a wilderness trip that turned deadly to a search for the best soda bread recipe in Ireland. 
 
 Silver winner in the Grand Award category is Catharine Hamm, travel editor of the Los Angeles Times, who also takes bronze in investigative reporting. The bronze in Grand Award goes to Gary Stoller, a reporter at USA Today who also wins gold for investigative reporting on airline maintenance failures. 
 
 In Special Packages/Projects, which recognizes in-depth coverage of a topic and emphasizes use of multiple, interactive media, the gold goes to Jill Schensul for “Namibia” in The Record and northjersey.com of Hackensack, N.J. 
 
 Rick Steves earns top honors for the best travel book with “Travel as a Political Act,” in which he shares experiences of more than 30 years exploring the world. Ben Mutzabaugh wins gold for the best travel blog, Today in the Sky, at USAToday.com. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Check out the complete list of winners: 
 
 
 
 What the Judges Said: 
 
 The competition, for work from spring 2009 to spring 2010, drew 1,161 entries. Faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication did judging. 
 
 “The entries were a breath of fresh air,” said Winston Cavin, coordinating judge at the university. “Unfazed by the economy, writers focused on budget-conscious family ideas along with the traditional fare of glitz and faraway places. Travel journalists became twice as productive, twice as clever, and their work as enjoyable as ever." 
 
 Afar, winner of the gold award as best travel magazine, is based in San Francisco and debuted in the summer of 2009. The magazine “presents a stunning mix of standing features (travel with a purpose, unusual places to stay) and stories on truly different topics (bog snorkeling in Wales?) from all over the world,” said the judge. 
 
 And for BudgetTravel.com, the top winner in online travel journalism sites, the judge said: “Amid a wide variety of travel sites, Budget Travel stands out for its quality of information, layout, design and navigation and its community.” 
 
 See the judges’ comments about all winners. 
 
 The Prizes for Winners: 
 
 The total prize money for individual winners this year was $20,600. The Grand Award earns the gold winner $1,500, the silver winner $750 and the bronze place $500. In individual categories, first-place gold winners each receive $500. Silver and bronze winners receive $250 and $150. The categories for Best Newspaper Travel Sections, Best Magazines, Best Online Travel Journalism Sites and Best Travel Packages/Projects are not given monetary awards. 
 
 The 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year receives an engraved crystal award. The other two Grand Award honors and all other gold winners are given engraved plaques, while silver and bronze honorees receive certificates mounted on plaques. 
 
 The awards are named for Lowell Thomas, acclaimed broadcast journalist, prolific author and world explorer during five decades in travel journalism. ||||| The forecast calls for hot and funny as an unlikely superstar scores an Emmy (for "Mike & Molly"), Oscar buzz (for "Bridesmaids"), a slew of projects and the industry's unlimited adoration (seriously). How'd she do it? Says her husband, 'She'll do anything for a laugh.' 
 
 It's been five days since Melissa McCarthy won her first Emmy on Sept. 18, and she is still visibly overwhelmed by emotion when she arrives at a photo shoot for The Hollywood Reporter at a Los Angeles studio. 
 
 Variations on "I can't believe all of this is happening to me" are uttered often by the Mike & Molly star, who greets a photographer, hairstylist and reporter without makeup or Hollywood pretense. If her career-making character in this past spring's surprise box-office smash Bridesmaids was forceful, masculine and raunchy (propositioning an air marshal midflight), then McCarthy, 41, in person is precisely the opposite: gentle, feminine and exceedingly polite. 
 
 Mention the statuette she has housed between family pictures on the mantel in her L.A. house, and you can see tears form. Push McCarthy on its significance, and you get the feeling she's doing all she can to keep them from streaming down her face. 
 
 VIDEO: Behind the Scenes of THR's Melissa McCarthy Cover Shoot 
 
 Still, she's more than willing to share details of her win -- by all accounts an upset of The Big C's Laura Linney, Nurse Jackie's Edie Falco and Parks and Recreation's Amy Poehler, all considered stronger favorites -- but confesses her memory is spotty from shock and genuine disbelief. 
 
 "I remember my knees went first, and I thought, 'Oh God, please don't fall down,' " she says of her thought process in that moment. "Just keep it upright. You're in a dress. Your mom and dad are watching." 
 
 She was standing beside fellow nominees Tina Fey, Martha Plimpton, Linney, Falco and Poehler, having rushed the stage when their names were announced, part of an unrehearsed comedy routine conceived days earlier by Poehler. By the time presenters Rob Lowe and Sofia Vergara began placing a tiara on McCarthy's head and a bouquet of roses and Emmy in her arms, McCarthy recalls registering a second thought: "Is this still the bit? Oh, this is going to be so awkward if this is part of the bit." 
 
 PHOTOS: The Hollywood Reporter's Cover Story Gallery 
 
 But bear hugs followed from the women, and McCarthy was pushed toward the microphone. She let out a "Holy smokes," the broadcast-appropriate version of another phrase she'd mouthed seconds earlier. Then she apologized to a U.S. TV audience of 12.5 million for being a crier, with tears in her eyes as she uttered such lines as, "I'm from Plainfield, Ill., and I'm standing here, and it's kind of amazing." 
 
 For McCarthy, the leapfrog over better-known nominees marked the official Hollywood coronation of an actress so outside the realm of convention that it gave the broadcast one of its few genuine surprises. Indeed, it would seem McCarthy has plenty working against her, a plus-size fortysomething in an industry that traditionally favors sample-size females two decades younger. But what she lacks in dewy ingenue sex appeal, she makes up for with depth, comedic timing and sheer likability. 
 
 In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a working actress more successful than -- or certainly as busy as -- McCarthy right now. Not only does she have a starring role on CBS' hit sitcom Mike & Molly -- the second season bowed Sept. 26 to a series-high 4.8 rating in the adults 18-to-49 demographic and 13.9 million viewers -- and an Oct. 1 gig as Saturday Night Live host, but also she recently sold a road-trip comedy pitch to Paramount (with Bridesmaids writer Annie Mumolo) and a TV comedy project to CBS (with her actor-producer husband, Ben Falcone). All of it comes on the heels of McCarthy's scene-stealing turn as Megan, the unfiltered, unconventional and undeniable standout of the May release Bridesmaids, a role so well-received it has Universal positioning her as awards-season bait on the film side. 
 
 "It's truly her moment," says CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler. Adds Peter Roth, president of Mike & Molly studio Warner Bros. TV, "This is the year of the McCarthy." It's a label he claims is richly deserved, adding: "Everything about her is relatable. You root for her; you want her to win." 
 
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 So what's it like to be at the white-hot center of Hollywood's attention, after nearly two decades working on the fringes? Overwhelming, exhilarating and utterly surreal are among the descriptors McCarthy uses. Earlier this summer, she was out rug shopping with Mumolo -- the longtime friends shop often for their homes, with Mumolo insisting McCarthy could be an interior designer if she weren't an actress -- when McCarthy's "team" called to see if she was up to do episode two of SNL's 37th season. 
 
 "I went into such an embarrassing, weird, inappropriately loud cry," says McCarthy of her response, laughing about a story she shares often. "Annie was running in circles. She thinks something horrible is happening because I'm bent over, literally, in the rug section of Living Spaces wailing." Mumolo cracks up at the story's retelling, adding, "I thought someone had died." 
 
 If you believe the actress, the crying stopped only recently. On this day, McCarthy -- set to leave for SNL rehearsals in two days -- is focused on preparing for the gig and calming her nerves for the show she calls the Holy Grail of comedy. She claims she'll fly to Manhattan with a trunk filled with sketches and characters from her decade-plus tenure with L.A. improv group the Groundlings. Among them: Marbles, a cross-eyed, eccentric genius she'd love to work into a skit on SNL. "If I get Marbles on SNL, you can hit me with a bus right after that and I'll be OK," jokes McCarthy. 
 
 It was this Groundlings character that won over Mike & Molly creator Mark Roberts during the series' casting process in early 2010. "When I saw Marbles [on McCarthy's reel], all I could think was this woman was an absolute genius," he says. "There's an off-handedness and unpredictability to her comedy that just makes it engaging." (It's worth noting that Marbles is also among the characters that won over Falcone, a fellow Groundlings alum. "She'll do anything for a laugh," he says, recalling his wife falling into splits onstage without stretching.) 
 
 To hear McCarthy tell it, Marbles is precisely the type of character she's drawn to: those who are notably different but still confident and comfortable in their skin. Bridesmaids' Megan, in particular, fits into that category, though only after McCarthy got to put her stamp on the hard-to-cast character. What was initially conceived as a nervous oddball McCarthy reimagined as an uber-confident misfit. 
 
 McCarthy went into her audition for Bridesmaids with Dockers, no makeup and a force-of-nature attitude. In her mind, she was channeling past Groundlings characters with the physical appearance of the Food Network's Guy Fieri, from one of her favorite shows Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (other favorites include Top Chef and Chopped). She remembers leaving the audition horrified by her performance: "The whole ride home, I was like, 'God, you get one shot, and you go in and you act weird,' " she says. "I was like, 'You idiot, you idiot.' " 
 
 Fortunately, producer Judd Apatow and director Paul Feig, along with writers and former Groundlings members Kristen Wiig and Mumolo, appreciated her take on weird. "My jaw hit the ground," recalls Feig of McCarthy's audition. "I remember watching the first time, and we almost couldn't laugh because we were like: 'Oh my God. What is she doing? This is amazing.' " 
 
 That her improv skills were similarly top-notch -- Feig is fond of telling the story of a scene that didn't make the cut where McCarthy's Megan starts ad-libbing about a squirrel infestation in her house, revealing there's "a squirrel burrowing its way into her vagina and living inside her" -- made her casting a no-brainer. 
 
 For Mumolo and Wiig, who had recommended her for the role, Bridesmaids was an opportunity to share the side of McCarthy that fans of her TV work did not know. "She'd just get on the stage [at Groundlings] and grab the crowd by the balls," says Mumolo, who acknowledges she was initially thrown when McCarthy was cast as the "nice little chef" on Gilmore Girls. Her husband, who played Air Marshal Jon in Bridesmaids, agrees, arguing, "Bridesmaids was really the first chance for Melissa to show what exactly she can do." 
 
 ♦♦♦♦♦ 
 
 So where does McCarthy's gut-busting humor come from? As noted in her Emmy speech, she was raised in Plainfield, some 45 minutes southwest of Chicago, on a working corn and soybean farm. (Her parents remain there, though they've since moved off the farm.) Without neighborhood kids to play with, she and her older sister spent much of their childhood creating characters and an imaginary world -- a skill that would clearly serve her well later in life. 
 
 By the time she hit her teens, a social McCarthy had joined the cheerleading squad and student council. But by her sophomore year, boredom had set in. "I turned intensely gothic," she laughs, reflecting on her attention-grabbing uniform of kabuki makeup, combat boots and shaved patches of her head. "I think I just loved all of the pageantry of it." 
 
 At that time, McCarthy had her heart set on a career in fashion. She and close friend and fellow goth Brian Atwood, now a well-known women's shoe designer, would tear out pages of Vogue and fantasize about their own lines. Her parents beat down the idea of her attending the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, so she settled on Southern Illinois University, where she briefly studied clothing and textiles before dropping out. 
 
 With boredom having seeped in again, McCarthy decided to follow her sister Margie to Boulder, Colo., where she found a gig making costumes for a dance company. But a visit from Atwood, who had already moved to New York, convinced a then 20-year-old McCarthy to pack her bags and join him in Manhattan. Once there, it was he who suggested she try her hand at stand-up, a genre with which she'd had no previous experience. 
 
 "It was terrible," she says, describing the wig and gold leather jacket Atwood squeezed her into for her first open-mic night at Stand Up New York. She hadn't realized most comics come with material and that the light that blinks after an allotted period is a signal to wrap it up. "I just told these long, bizarre stories," she chuckles. "I had no idea what the light meant, so I was winking and nodding at it like: 'Thanks, guys. I appreciate the help.' I kept going and going." Perhaps surprisingly, she was invited back. 
 
 At first, a young McCarthy loved it. "This idea of really being able to pace an audience and make strangers laugh, I just thought it was the greatest thing," she says. But she grew tired of the hecklers fairly quickly and turned her attention to theater, studying and performing in off-off-Broadway productions for several years. 
 
 The inability to make a living finally caught up to her, and she packed her bags again and moved to Los Angeles, where she moved into a friend's kitchen to save money. Her sister had sent her a newspaper clip about The Groundlings, so she boarded a city bus, auditioned and got in. "It changed my life," she insists. "It taught me to write and how to do a character rather than just play crazy." (McCarthy is set to return to the Groundlings with a special performance in October.) 
 
 After a string of lower-level production gigs (the first on her cousin Jenny McCarthy's eponymous MTV sketch-comedy show) and small roles in film (Go, Charlie's Angels), she landed a supporting role on Gilmore Girls, a coming-of-age drama on the now-defunct WB (and later on spinoff the CW). The series, starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as mother and daughter, ran from 2000 to 2007. Within months of wrapping, McCarthy was hitched to another friend role in ABC's short-lived Christina Applegate vehicle Samantha Who? 
 
 Then came Mike & Molly, in which executive producer Chuck Lorre decided the longtime supporting actress "was more than ready to step into the lead role." The first time McCarthy read with co-star Billy Gardell, says Lorre, "was one of those moments you dream about. They were perfect together. I like to imagine that Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows were smiling down on us." (She was eight months pregnant with her second child at the time.) 
 
 When Mike & Molly premiered in fall 2010, critics were struck by its premise. Rather than feature impossibly thin characters living upper-class existences, as many primetime offerings do, the CBS series centered on a blue-collar cop and schoolteacher couple who meet at Overeaters Anonymous. The plotline stirred early controversy when a Marie Claire writer claimed on the magazine's website that she would be "grossed out if [she] had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kiss each other." 
 
 But Roberts believes the realness of the series' characters -- and their waistlines -- has helped make Mike & Molly a success, regularly garnering 10 million viewers during its first season. "I had gotten very tired of watching people on television that were just sort of improbable," says Roberts of his thought process while penning the pilot. "They were too perfect, they made too much money, and their apartments were way outside of their economic abilities." 
 
 For Gardell, a long-time stand-up comic, that authenticity was part of the characters' appeal. "We're not the norm on TV, and I think we take great pride in representing down-to-earth people who are just trying to get better," says McCarthy's co-star. "I think you have to have a deep soul to do that, and Melissa definitely has one." 
 
 McCarthy agrees, claiming she was drawn to the idea that the show features real people with real jobs. "I don't know any neighborhoods where everyone's walking around in seven-inch heels and perfect makeup," she says, arguing she has been less bothered by criticism of her physical appearance since becoming a mother to daughters Vivian, 4 -- who has been parading around for days with her mother's Emmy tiara -- and Georgette, 1 ½. 
 
 "The stupid stuff like what I wear or how I look I can't control, so I just try not to give too much energy to it," she continues, noting later that after having her second child, her body is a work in progress. "At 20, I would have been like: 'Don't they like me? Was it my hair?' At 41, I think the things that define me, I hope, are a lot more than those kinds of petty things." 
 
 With her raised profile, McCarthy is getting ready to launch a retail line for other plus-size women. "Trying to find stuff that's still fashion-forward in my size is damn near impossible. It's either for like a 98-year-old woman or a 14-year-old hooker, and there is nothing in the middle," she laughs, recalling her recent struggles to find a dress for the Emmys. After combing through "9 million dresses with taffeta or shiny bows," she opted to channel that teenage passion and design her own (with couture dressmaker Daniella Pearl). 
 
 She could need more of her own creations as the awards circuit heats up. McCarthy is likely to garner attention for her role in Bridesmaids, a rare female-lead comedy hit with both critics and viewers. The movie earned nearly $170 million at the domestic box office, making it the No. 2-grossing comedy of the year behind The Hangover Part II. (By comparison, Apatow's earlier hits The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad banked $109 million, $149 million and $121 million, respectively.) 
 
 What's more, it solidified something so rare it's almost unheard of in Hollywood circles: a posse of female comedians, including Groundlings alumna McCarthy, Wiig, Mumolo, Maya Rudolph and Wendi McLendon-Covey. For the genre's males, there has been the Adam Sandler crew, the Will Ferrell clan and even the Jason Segel-Seth Rogen gang. But outside of Fey and Poehler's East Coast tribe, there has never been a network of female comedians as powerful as this one. "We all keep texting and calling each other, going: 'Are you freaking out right now? I don't know what's happening,' " says Mumolo of the troupe. "I think we're all still spinning from the summer. And Melissa, Melissa is in outer space." 
 
 ♦♦♦♦♦ 
 
 Now, McCarthy and Falcone, currently in Atlanta filming What to Expect When You're Expecting, are busy prepping a production company. The pair is leaning toward naming it On the Day, a phrase McCarthy utters often. "Whenever someone wants to really rehearse a part, I always say, 'Oh, on the day, on the day it will be fine," she says, referencing her distaste for over-rehearsing. 
 
 It's a fitting next step given how many projects McCarthy has in the works, a byproduct of her recent success. "To have the opportunity to start developing and being on the creating side of stuff, for me, is one of the most amazing and exciting things that's happened," she says, back in gush mode. "I've been writing for 15 years, and now, suddenly, people are like, 'Oh, what's in that drawer?' It's like, 'Well, I'll show what's in the drawer.' " 
 
 In addition to being in negotiations to star opposite Jason Bateman in Identity Thief, McCarthy and Mumolo are co-writing another McCarthy star vehicle. The project, set up at Paramount, will feature McCarthy as the mastermind of a plan to hijack the Stanley Cup in order to cheer up her sick husband. 
 
 Then there's the multicamera comedy concept about a woman having a midlife crisis that was recently sold to CBS, which she and Falcone will co-write and co-executive produce. "When you hear a pitch and the writer knows every aspect of that character's life, you feel the reality," says CBS' Tassler of McCarthy's animated sell. "There was crying in the pitch, and then there was laughter and outrage. She painted the full picture." 
 
 McCarthy's drawer also houses a dark comedy feature script that's about halfway complete from McCarthy and The Help writer-director Tate Taylor, another fellow Groundlings alum. But it's a project titled Tammy that McCarthy claims has her heart. 
 
 "It's so funny, and it also kind of breaks my heart," she says of a film script of hers centering on a woman who is leading an exceptionally unfulfilled life. The character wakes up one morning as things are crumbling around her and decides she has to get out of town -- and the only way to do so is in her grandmother's car. When her heavy-drinking grandmother insists on going along, they end up on a wild road trip to Mount Rushmore. "It's these two women who are not where they thought they'd be, and they kind of band together," she says, her excitement on display. 
 
 The Bridesmaids team is not through with her, either. Apatow already has locked her into his still-untitled Knocked Up spinoff, and Feig says his Dumb Jock project at Universal has been set up for her to star in. "She's really one of my new heroes," says Feig of McCarthy. "I'll do anything to keep working with her. When you find someone like her, you don't let them go." ||||| Update: 5:17 p.m.: CNN, where Zakaria hosts the show Fareed Zakaria GPS (Global Public Square), has suspended Zakaria as well. Here's an official statement: 
 
 "We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria’s Time column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review." 
 
 Though CNN has pulled the blog post, we found it thanks to Google cache. It was posted on August 8th and included this passage which is similar to the Lepore article he has apologized for. Note that it's different and omits the Winkler reference, but reads very similarly to the Lepore passage: 
 
 And it even includes the "agreed unanimously" phrasing, which was pointed out earlier: 
 
 Update 4:18 p.m.: Despite his apology, Time has suspended Zakaria for his offense. Here's the official statement from Ali Zelenko, a spokeswoman for Time: 
 
 Time accepts Fareed's apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed's column for a month, pending further review. 
 
 Update 3:45 p.m.: The statement from Fareed Zakaria, as we reported earlier, is an apology for inappropriately lifting material from Jill Lepore: 
 
 "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers." 
 
 Original: Fareed Zakaria reads The New Yorker. We can only assume that because his latest column for Time on gun control, reads a lot like Jill Lepore's lengthy New Yorker article on the NRA from April. The conservative media watchdog group Newsbusters (by way of media blogger Jim Romenesko) points us to this paragraph from Zakaria's "The Case for Gun Control," from Time's August 20 issue: 
 
 Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man." 
 
 Compare that with this from Jill Lepore's "Battleground America," which ran in The New Yorker on April 23: 
 
 As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man. 
 
 We'd emphasize the similarities, but the gists of both paragraphs make the same point, have the same turns, and yeah, this doesn't look great for an award-winning big name journalist/columnist like Zakaria. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out that Zakaria in 2009 had lifted quotes from his interviews without attribution--today's piece runs without any mention to Lepore. So what gives and just how bad is this? Well, going by The New Yorker's Lehrer Plagiarism Scale, we'd say it ranks worse than Jonah Lehrer borrowing from himself (a misdemeanor according to editor David Remnick said at the time) but not as bad as Lehrer making up quotes (which eventually spelled his resignation from this magazine). And this offense seems a lot more serious than recycling a commencement speech, which Zakaria did this year at Duke and Harvard. 
 
 Updates 12:46 p.m.: Reached by phone, Zakaria declined to comment about the similarities between his Time column and Jill Lepore's New Yorker article, however we're told that he will be releasing an apology shortly. 
 
 1:08 p.m.: Zakaria's column also includes two more instances of similarities to Lepore's piece, the next two paragraphs after the one cited above, in fact. As the National Review's Robert VerBruggen points out (because he took issue with its accuracy) they both describe a Supreme Court decision the same way. Here is Zakaria: 
 
 ... Robert H. Jackson, said the Second Amendment grants people a right that "is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state." The court agreed unanimously. 
 
 And this from The New Yorker: 
 
 ... Furthermore, Jackson said, the language of the amendment makes clear that the right “is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state.” The Court agreed, unanimously. 
 
 Next, Zakaria writes about a quote from Chief Justice Warren Burger: 
 
 Things started to change in the 1970s as various right-wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control, overturning laws in state legislatures, Congress and the courts. But Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview after his tenure as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud--I repeat the word fraud--on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime." 
 
 That quote also appears in Lepore's piece, though she has a more detailed introduction. 
 
 According to the constitutional-law scholar Carl Bogus, at least sixteen of the twenty-seven law-review articles published between 1970 and 1989 that were favorable to the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment were “written by lawyers who had been directly employed by or represented the N.R.A. or other gun-rights organizations.” In an interview, former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the new interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” 
 
 1:22 p.m.: Still no statement from Zakaria, but a Time spokesperson has just issued this statement: "Time takes any accusation of plagiarism by any of our journalists very seriously, and we will carefully examine the facts before saying anything else on the matter." 1:51 p.m.: And from a New Yorker spokesperson: "We don't have a comment on this right now." 
 
 
 
 
 
 Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at aabadsantos at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. 
 
 Alexander Abad-Santos
– The year's top travel writer is a familiar face, but more so for acting than writing. Andrew McCarthy of Brat Pack fame (yes, Molly Ringwald's true love in Pretty in Pink) has won the 2010 Lowell Thomas award for Travel Journalist of the Year, notes Jim Romenesko's blog at PoynterOnline. McCarthy's freelance articles have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appetit, Afar, and the Atlantic, among others. (His piece on Ireland in the latter is here.) "Word by word, paragraph-by-paragraph, entry-by-entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way—by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories," declared the judges.