E-Media Tidbits

Yesterday the winners of the 10th annual Webby awards were announced. The winner of the news category (for both the Webby and the People's Voice award) was -- no surprise -- BBC News. Similarly, EPSN.com took both the Webby and the People's Voice for sports. New York Times "Foreign Affairs" columnist and author Thomas Friedman was named Webby Person of the Year -- probably for his influential bestseller The World Is Flat.

NPR was a huge hit this year. NPR.org took the Webby for radio, the series "This I Believe" took the Webby for religion and spirituality, NPR Music (which includes music news) won the People's Voice for music, and NPR podcasts won the People's Voice for podcasts. Also, in the law category, Justice Learning (a joint project of NPR's Justice Talking and the New York Times Learning Network) took the Webby.

In the newspaper site category, Guardian Unlimited took the Webby, while the Washington Post won the People's Voice. Mother Jones won the People's Voice for politics. National Geographic Magazine Online won the Webby for magazines, while Grist took the People's Voice in that category. CNet.com won the People's Voice for reviews. And my favorite "online news source," The Onion, took the Webby and the People's Voice for humor.

Snopes.com -- the best resource for spying online hoaxes and urban legends, which I think is an interesting excercise in reporting, won the Webby and People's Voice for "Weird." OK, yeah, a lot of its content is weird, but I've found the site extremely useful, and even newsy at times.

Congratulations to all the winners!