Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour joined a very exclusive club on Thursday evening, when she was formally inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame during the National Magazine Awards, held at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. She became the 25th editor to be honored, joining Tina Brown, Helen Gurley Brown, Lewis Lapham, Clay Felker and Michael Kinsley.

When Patrick Wintour, The Guardian's political editor and Wintour's younger brother, was unable to arrive in New York due to the volcanic ash-related travel delays, he taped a message in front of London's Parliament. "I understand it's like the John Wayne award, for someone who's been around for a long time and hasn't won any prizes," he said, in that very dry British wit. "So it's very sweet of you to think of the old girl at this stage."

"She's a creative force and although many devilish things have been written about her, she's my guardian angel," Mr. Wintour said.

The New Yorker's editor-in-chief David Remnick stepped in to introduce his Condé Nast colleague, noting that he was an odd choice to do so, as he based his clothing choices on "what doesn't itch." "I don't think there are many editors in this world who get namedropped in a Jay-Z lyric," he said, before semi-rapping, "Caught up in the in crowd/ Now you're in style/ Anna, the winter gets cold in Vogue/ with your skin out."

"I have no idea what that means but it's absolutely fantastic," Remnick said to a thrilled audience.

"It's well known to anyone who works at a magazine that none of this is a solo undertaking," Wintour said, before thanking her Vogue colleagues, including "flame-haired, flame-tempered" Grace Coddington, Sally Singer, Hamish Bowles and Andre Leon Talley, a pair of the "very best-dressed editors I've ever known."

Although the gala was honoring the power of the printed page, we asked the influential editor about Vogue's plans for the iPad. "We have a lot of different ideas on the drawing board right now," Wintour said. "There's so many ideas that we haven't focused on what it's going to be exactly yet."

"We're currently working very hard on the relaunch of our Web site, which is going to have [interactive] components. That's really uppermost in our mind," Wintour said, adding that the new Vogue.com launches in August. "Once we go through that, we'll focus on the iPad."