Pitchfork is proud to announce that Senior Writer Alphonse Pierre has been chosen as a 2025 ASME Next Award honoree by the American Society of Magazine Editors, as part of the 2025 National Magazine Awards.
The organization’s description of the ASME Next award is as follows: “The awards honor outstanding achievement by early-career journalists. Any full-time or freelance writer, photographer, editor, social-media journalist, designer or photo editor is eligible for nomination. Five award winners are chosen each year and receive medals bearing the likeness of Alexander Calder’s Elephant Walking.”
Alphonse Pierre—pictured above, on the left, with Pitchfork’s Head of Editorial Content, Mano Sundaresan—joined Pitchfork in 2018, and was promoted to Senior Writer in 2023. He’s interviewed Veeze, Bartees Strange, Navy Blue, and Ken Carson, among many others, expertly covered the headline-making feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, and, in the last year alone, reviewed high-profile releases by the likes of Playboi Carti, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Lil Uzi Vert, Megan Thee Stallion, Childish Gambino, and Sexyy Red. Pierre’s weekly column, Off the Dome, has been published on the site since 2020. Find the latest installment, an interview with Washington, D.C., rapper Paco Panama, below.
In his nomination, Pitchfork’s Deputy Director, Jeremy D. Larson, wrote: “Alphonse Pierre chronicles the latest in rap with an authority and fervor—not to mention a spirit of provocation—that reflects a deep understanding of hip-hop’s history, coupled with a commitment to painting a sharp, unsanitized picture of its present. Pierre does not mince words, and he does not look at music making from a distance. He writes about hip-hop and rap not only as a critic but as a listener who is living alongside his subject, enthralled by the work of the artists who are growing the genre 50 years after its birth.”
The National Magazine Awards were established in 1966 to honor print (and, now, digital) publications that “consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative techniques, noteworthy journalistic enterprise and imaginative art direction.” The awards are sponsored by ASME in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and are administered by ASME.
Pitchfork previously received National Magazine Award nominations in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024. In 2013, Pitchfork won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in Digital Media, and former Associate Editor Cat Zhang won an ASME Next Award in 2022.
