BBC News site wins award

The BBC News website won the main award for general excellence in journalism in the Online News Association Awards in Hollywood - this at a time when the broadcaster is due to cut investment in the web and reinvest in other areas (interesting comment on that by the Guardian's Emily Bell). Other categories included (with links to winners):

Creative use of the medium

Enterprise journalism

Breaking news

Online commentary

Service journalism

Specialty journalism

Best student journalism

Best student Web site

Contest judges

There's some excellent work here from both winners and nominees, giving a good sense of the great potential of the web for reportage. Particularly mindblowing is the Washington Post's interactive feature on the Israel-Palestine barrier, combining video, animation, an interactive map, panoramas, and sound. More amusing is the Gotham Gazette's games and quizzes illustrating topical issues and showing how a small news site can compete on creativity. Likewise, JournalNow's piece on a controversial murder case where the (black) suspect was wrongly imprisoned - including a wealth of original documentation.

At the same time one writer bemoans big media companies eating up the competition in new media, as Dow Jones takes over CBS MarketWatch.