The New York Times won three Online Journalism Awards and darkhorse newbie NewWest grabbed two at the Online News Association's (ONA) sixth annual convention Saturday in New York.
NYTimes.com won the General Excellence award, the Outstanding Use of Multiple Media (for its Class Matters series, and Breaking News for Asia's Deadly Waves, the website's coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami. NYTimes.com won the awards in the large websites categories.
NewWest, a site launched just eight months ago, won the General Excellence for small-category sites and an Enterprise award for its report Sex, Money and Meth Addiction. The General Excellence award for medium websites went to Spokesman Review. The Palm Springs Desert Sun's McGowan Family Tragedy fetched it the Breaking News prize for small websites.
The Online Commentary award for large websites went to Slate's Seth Stevenson for his Ad Report Card; Joel Mathis of Lawrence.com got it for medium websites; while Arthur O’Donnell, Energy Pulse was awarded for the small websites category for his The Business Electric. The Outstanding Use of Multimedia award for small websites saw a tie between Boulder Daily Camera for Mission to Mante and Poughkeepsie Journal for State of the Hudson.
Specialty Journalism award for large websites went to the Chronicle of Higher Education, and that for small ones to News@nature.com. The Service Journalism award for large websites went to The Journal News for Your Right to Know, and that for small ones to Winston-Salem Journal for Unsafe Haven, The Crisis in Home Health Care. The Enterprise Journalism award for large websites was given to Slate for What is Torture?
There were no finalists for the Best Student website, but the Student Journalism prize was awarded to University of North Carolina for Global Messengers. Mickey Klaus of Slate was awarded a Special Recognition Commentary for large websites.
The OJA are a comprehensive set of journalism prizes honouring excellence in English-language Web journalism. They are administered by the Online News Association (ONA) and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
The contest was coordinated by Rebecca Fairley Raney, Annenberg contest project manager, and John Granatino, Assistant General Manager, Belo Interactive Media and chairman of ONA's Awards Committee.
The finalists and the winners were selected through a two-step process. First, a group of 70 journalists screened entries in each category and narrowed them to a set of five to ten nominees. These nominees were then reviewed by the OJA judges, a group of 11 journalists with extensive experience in new and old media, who met at USC to pick the finalists and the winners.
Located in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, the USC Annenberg School for Communication (www.annenberg.usc.edu) is among the nation's leading institutions devoted to the study of journalism and communication, and their impact on politics, culture and society. With an enrollment of more than 1,700 graduate and undergraduate students, USC Annenberg offers BA, MA and PhD degrees in journalism, communications, and public relations.
The Online News Association is an association composed largely of professional online journalists. The Association has more than 600 professional members whose principal livelihood involves gathering or producing news for digital presentation. The membership includes news writers, producers, designers, editors, photographers and others who produce news for the Internet or other digital delivery systems, as well as academic members and others interested in the development of online journalism.
The judges for the 2005 awards were:
- Beau Brendler, director, Consumer Reports WebWatch
- Sue Gardner, senior director, CBC.Ca
- Ruth Gersh, Director of Online Services, AP Digital and president of the ONA
- Susan Mernit, Partner, Founder 5ive Group
- Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer, CNN.com
- Rich Jaroslovsky, executive editor, government and economy, Bloomberg News
- Chris Jennewein, director of Internet operations, Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
- Anthony Moor, editor, OrlandoSentinel.com
- Michael Parks, professor and director, School of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication
- Kevin Roderick, journalist and creator of L.A. Observed blog
- Neal Scarbrough, vice president and senior news editor, ESPN.com
