On-line Journalism is Rewarding

First On-line Journalism Award in Britain favours big players

There they all were. People you would never normally see. Day in and day out, they never leave their offices. They're always hunched over their keyboards, surfing and browsing and typing away. These are the on-line journalists. Not just any Internet hacks and hackettes, but the finest of Britain. We were gathered together in the foyer of the City University at 6 pm Thursday evening for the award ceremony of the Net Media On-line Journalism Awards 1999. Most of us, who had not met before, had to struggle for a few minutes with the discovery that there are people behind the e-mail addresses. For me, at least, this contained a slight shock.

Smartly dressed in their best black or dark blue business outfits, this crowd didn't match the demographics you usually encounter in London's urban wildlife. 90% were white middle-aged men as against 10% shared between women, ethnic minorities and younger people (everybody under 45). It reminded me of the Internet in its early days. But why bother with political correctness, fashion and age?

Because the outcome of this first-ever competition for on-line journalism in the UK was all but unpredictable. You just had to look at the shortlist and it was obvious that the BBC would win at least in half of the categories since they were shortlisted in almost every one. To cut a long story short, they actually did. The BBC won the first prizes in the business reporting, general news and science & technology categories. The big B was followed closely by 'The Guardian', whose on-line operations won them 2 awards: one for best news design and one for Film Unlimited.

And now the good news. John West from the small Internet news agency 'Out There News' won in the top category and became 'Internet Journalist of the Year'. The Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) won the second most important prize for 'Best Overall Online Journalism'.

What else is left to say? Not much indeed. The ceremony was opened by an appalling speech by Adam Clayton Powell III, vice-president of technology and programmes at the Freedom Forum. This cheerleader for the digital revolution threatened us with a story from the 'New York Times' that Moore's Law about chip power doubling every 18 months could continue for the next 30 to 80 years. In other words, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood and the Pentagon will continue to dominate the world.

Then later, at the buffet reception, the on-line cyborgs showed their human side. Suddenly, the demographics had improved and, between small talk, shrimp and white wine, real-life networking began. Members of the awards jury unmasked themselves. Wendy Grossman displayed a Well T-shirt and badge which I truly envied her for. Duncan Campbell was putting on a brave face despite suffering from a broken rib caused by a bicycle accident one week ago. Dan O'Brian must have also been there somewhere. He really should have won a prize for his newsletter NTK, but they obviously needed him on the jury along with Garron Baines, Mike Butcher, Carol Dukes, Martin Dunn, Robin Hunt, Mike Smartt, Tom Thomson, Giles Turnbull and those already mentioned.

So what should we do with the jury then? Send them to the guillotine? To be fair, they themselves seemed to have had some doubts. First of all there was some concern about the quality of entries to the competition. Milverton Wallace, organiser of NetMedia at City Univertsity's Department of Journalism said at the opening of the conference:

And as Duncan Campbell put it in the small booklet handed out after the ceremony:

Hopefully, larger will also mean a more mixed competition. One which was less British and less self-obsessed. An event which could represent that "other Britain" which you can find whenever you get on a bus to the East End, but which doesn't seem to exist within the dominant news providers. However, at least one hopeful thing came out of this event. On-line journalists have received some recognition at long last. Otherwise you could think that we're just a bunch of text-filtering programs.