Slate, BBC bag Web journalism awards

NEW YORK: Web magazine Slate.com and the Internet site of the British

Broadcasting Corp. took top honors in the second annual Online Journalism

Awards, selected from among 870 entries from 15 countries.

The awards, announced on Friday, also featured Indian Web site Rediff.com (www.rediff.com)

for its coverage of the Gujarat earthquake in January, and Salon.com (www.salon.com)

for a series of reports on Clear Channel Communications, a powerful force in the

radio industry.

Despite the honors, Web news offerings have been battered by a sharp downturn

in advertising spending that has shuttered many sites and left others fending

for survival. Salon Media Group Inc., for instance, is fending off a delisting

from the Nasdaq after its stock disintegrated. It now trades for 15 cents a

share.

Sreenath Sreenivasan, administrator of the awards and a professor of new

media at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, said quality has not

suffered despite the downturn. "The showcase of journalism excellence

created by the contest proves that reports of the death of Internet journalism

have been greatly exaggerated," he said in a statement.

Slate.com (www.slate.com), published by technology giant Microsoft Corp., won

the award for general excellence in online journalism by an independent site.

The BBC site (news.bbc.co.uk) was given the same award for affiliated Web sites.

Among other awards, a Web site called ThemeParkInsider (www.themeparkinsider.com)

took the honors in the service journalism category for independent sites for its

report on the safety of amusement parks in the United States.