New Yorker magazine has returned the National Magazine Award it won for an article on the Japanese “rental family” industry, the first return of an award in the 55-year history of the industry’s highest honor. magazines.
The 2019 feature film award went to New Yorker and writer Elif Batuman for the April 2018 article, which described two people who claimed to be customers of a Tokyo-based service called Family Romance. One said he was a lone widower who hired actresses through the company to play the role of a woman and a daughter, and the other said she was a single mother who hired a surrogate father for her daughter. .
In a December 2020 editor’s note added to the online version of the article, the New Yorker said both alleged customers were married. It appears the woman was married to the owner of Family Romance. The findings about the three people, who followed a New York-based internal investigation, “largely undermine the credibility of what they told us,” the note said.
The American Society of Magazine Editors, which sponsors the National Magazine Awards in partnership with Columbia University School of Journalism, said in a statement that the New Yorker has decided to return his award. The society said Mrs Batuman’s sources deceived her and said she “praises the New Yorker for his research into history”.
Sid Holt, executive director of the magazine, initially told the Washington Post that he did not believe the problems with the article would lead to a reconsideration of the award.