The Online News Association recently named its 2008 winners award winners. Awards were handed out in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 13.Checking out the student winners first, one sees some excellent rising talent.
South of Here is "a documentary multimedia project produced by students from the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Facultad de Comunicación at the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile. It explores the history, people and communities of Tierra del Fuego in Argentina and Chile, the surrounding waterways and their critical relationship to the environment."
Looking at this site, one is first struck by the impressive photography and simple layout of the site. It's very easy to navigate and features large photos, quick point and click summaries, and lengthy, well-produced slideshows. The producers did a good job with subtitles and natural sound, but may have overused titles a bit (see the "Last of the Yagans" whose titles can break up the flow of the slideshow). Nonetheless, the photos really carry this production.
Looking at the winner for investigative journalism from a small site (The Times Herald Record in Middletown, NYC), one can see just how much online video presentations are beginning to take on the production values of TV.
This story about the murder of a prostitute, and a botched investigation which led to a man's conviction, features a nice use of text and video, with small, easily digestible chunks of information that allow the viewer to skip through the story details at his or her own pace. A comprehensive piece that really ties together the paper's exhaustive coverage of this story.
Another interesting winner (outstanding use of digital technology - small site) with some pretty major implications was Everyblock, a site devoted to delivering the news on a city block basis. So far the site was focusing on major cities: Boston, San Fran, LA, New York, DC, Charlotte, a few others.
Using a fairly simple interface, this site allows users to keep tabs on things like crime in their respective neighborhoods, building permits, restaurant inspections, and of course, news articles.
With most print outlets undergoing budget cuts, a site like this is destined to take off, creating new citizen journalists in its wake. This is a revolutionary new means of tailoring news to personal concerns, while also allowing watchdogs to spring up from within the concerned community itself. Will be interesting to watch how many people use this site and how it expands (city council coverage????)
You can even find lost pets (click image below).
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