The New Yorker magazine returned the National Magazine award it won for an article on the “rental family” industry in Japan, the first return of an award in the 55-year history of the magazine industry’s greatest honor.
The 2019 feature film award was given to New Yorker and staff writer Elif Batuman for the April 2018 article, which described two people who said they were customers of a service in Tokyo called Family Romance. One said he was a lone widower who hired actresses through the company to play the role of a wife and daughter, and the other said she was a single mother who hired a surrogate father for her daughter.
In a note from the publisher in December 2020 added to the online version of the article, the New Yorker said that both alleged customers were in fact married. The woman appears to be married to the owner of Family Romance, the note said. The findings of the three people, who followed an internal investigation in New York, “greatly undermine the credibility of what they told us,” the note said.
The American Society of Magazine Editors, which sponsors the National Magazine Awards in association with Columbia University’s journalism school, said in a statement that the New Yorker has decided to return the award. The company said Ms. Batuman’s sources deceived her and said she “congratulated the New Yorker on her investigation into the story.”
Sid Holt, executive director of the magazine company, initially told the Washington Post that he did not think the problems with the article would lead to a reconsideration of the award.