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Online Only -- 12.08.00
(Dis)counting the Votes
To crown its Men of the Year, does GQ employ fuzzy math?
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By
 Magazines from Teen People to The New Yorker now sponsor annual award ceremonies -- gala events with high-profile honorees. GQ's Men of the Year Awards show is the five-year-old granddaddy of these spectacles and one of the few to be televised (this year on December 9 on FOX). GQ's is also one of the only major magazine awards shows determined by reader vote: "Who said no one ever listens to you?" the magazine asked readers last summer. "We listen. So tell us: Who should be GQ's Men of the Year?" The answer appears to be whoever agrees to show up. When marquee names have refused to participate in the Men of the Year photo shoot and ceremony, the magazine has, in some cases, quietly altered the results of its poll. So much for "we listen": celebrity-wrangling trumps the vote.
Programs such as GQ's or the Vogue/VH1 Fashion Awards are built on celebrity participation, because it's the stars who lure advertisers and viewers. GQ's "Men of the Year" issue is an annual best-seller: Publisher Thomas Florio says that the 350 pages of advertising in the November 2000 issue were the most ever for a men's magazine. He calls "Men of the Year," "a cross-media package that [goes] beyond space in the magazine and time on Fox." Such shows generate enormous revenue, explains Lauren Zalaznick, a VH1 executive who produces the Vogue/VH1 Fashion Awards and My VH1 Music Awards shows. It's a foolproof formula. Advertisers are told, "We're going to have these kinds of categories and these kinds of stars," she says.
Unless, of course, the stars don't want the award: GQ has failed to persuade Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson to attend for some time, according to a source close to the Lakers, who insisted on anonymity. When Jackson declined the award in 1998, the magazine used stock photographs of him in the issue and presented the award in absentia, says the source. But when Jackson won the reader poll in 2000 and again declined to participate, GQ gave the honor to someone else. "They said, 'It's such great publicity, how could anyone pass up something like this?'" recalls the Lakers source. "Jackson's response was 'It's not anything I want.'" In December GQ named Doc Rivers, of the Orlando Magic, "Coach of the Year." An NBA source, who asked not to be named, recalls the negotiations: "If Doc is not available," he asked, "does that mean he doesn't win?" GQ equivocated. "It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out their methods," says the source. Rivers attended the ceremony.
GQ spokeswoman Kathleen Madden acknowledges that Rivers did not win the poll, and says he finished second. She also says that GQ changed results in the "Individual Athlete" category, substituting second-place Pete Sampras for Tiger Woods, who refused the award. (Jackson, Woods, and Sampras all declined to comment for this article. A spokesman for the Orlando Magic would say only that "Rivers appreciates any recognition from GQ readers.") According to Madden, Stephen King won the literature award by an "overwhelming margin" but declined to participate, so the prize was scrapped. She says Sampras and Rivers were the only winners who were not GQ readers' first choice; she would not release the actual tallies from the 16,000-person survey.
Editor in chief Arthur Cooper brushes off concerns about GQ selectively ignoring readers' votes. "You can't give an award to someone who doesn't want it," he says. "It's a nice award, but is it an Oscar? I'd like to think so, but I'm not fooling myself." 
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